OUGD403 Study Task 01
Collaborative Branding

As a group we've been asked to rebrand Crosswater, which is a national company designing unique brassware solutions. As a group the first thing we did was to research the company, Crosswater is based in Kent but has leading European designers bringing the user unparalleled design, superior materials and function since 1998. It has a vision to provide a functional collection to suit all environments that doesn't compromise design quality,my first initial thoughts of Crosswater was thats its personality and statement was to provide excellence in its sector of design.

By researching the company we came across key words that come across as values of the company such as innovation,technology and quality that helped the basis for the basic ideas for the logo rebrand but before we jumped straight into ideas we decided upon a typeface. We decided that Futura is the best option for the rebrand becuase out of the six options of Vignelli's basics, it is the most modern. To expand on that,Futura is known for its efficiency and Bauhaus style, these particular two link with Crosswater becuase it aims to be effecient with design and also has a brand within the company called Bauhaus.

The clean design of Futura seemed a better alternative than other obvious option 'Helvetica', the reasons behind this decision were that Helvetica is too common and would just look like another everyday logo. The remaining four typefaces of Massimo Vignelli's basics were all out of the question as all of them aren't modern enough for the rebrand of Crosswater. For example a lowercase Garamond wouldn't interprtit a modern bathroom design company very well because of the serif style.

Once we decided upon a typeface we looked into the current logo and other bathroom company logos,the current logo itself in my opioion is very good.

I like the curved lettering which I believe symbolises the design of water taps, the 't' leaves the baseline I think the reason for this is it would effect the cross in the left hand corner of the design and wouldn't make it as effective. One slight problem I have is the length of the logo, a small amount of kerning could help that aspect of the design but the subtracting of space could take away the impact of the curved lettering.

When we looked at other logos, the majority of them are similar. Stick to the same colour schemes and always seem to involve a water drop which leads onto influences. We researched into typeface logos and water illustrated logos, ones we found most inspiring were flat base design logos which is the most likely option for our designs.

Our initial ideas were to have a lowercase design, to communicate calmness and cleannesses. An idea of connecting letters relating to pipes and water links. Symbols such as crosses and water drops intertwined. These were all small initial ideas that we could later expand on during the week.