03 Apr Self Portrait
This is my self-portrait
Last Monday, I went to a master class held by designers David Carson and Felipe Ibañez. I signed up not only because I knew David Carson’s work, but because the aim of the workshop was to use “design and art to create a disruptive communication which will attract the audience’s attention”.
I have a Fine Arts Painting degree, and has developped my career in the fields of graphic design, branding and business. I always feel I sit in between 2 (or 3, or 4) worlds and I saw this workshop as a chance to acquire tools to help me blend those worlds together.
The only thing I will tell you about the workshop in itself is that if you have the chance to attend one of Carson’s courses, do it. It was revealing and liberating for me.
These few hours of making felt great. I just felt like I was back in that Studio at Brighton and Hove college during my pre-foundation course back in the early 2000s and where I discovered how much I loved painting.
Carson has said on many occasions that “you have to put yourself into your work”. This makes the work more personal, and more powerful, and I felt a sense of liberation. I could just be me.
When we got to the part where you explain your work, we didn’t get to mine and, I felt relief because I am not good with words. So many things went on during the creation process that it was messy in my head. I needed to write words down before expressing them. Here they are:
The center element looks like an octopus (or an atomic bomb as a friend told me yesterday while looking at it in my studio). I started by tearing long stripes of paper. I do a lot of things, I draw, I paint, I am a designer, I am a consultant in business projects, I am a strategist, I am an artist, I do branding, I structure things, I love being messy, then once I have done all that, I do something else. I am a little all over the place but my head and rational part keep it all together. That’s the half oval that holds all the stripes together.
On the top left, we have a C shape which is there to protect me from conflict, negative people or situations. It reminds me to be good and keeps me away from my fears.
Then we have a baseline at the bottom of the image that keeps everything stable.
The picture is divided into black and white backgrounds that represent the feeling I am always in between two worlds. I am not a painter, but neither a designer. I am not British for the British, nor totally Belgian for the Belgians, I am shy but not really, …
This is my self-portrait. The portrait of a person who lives in both the rational and the irrational, the messy and the organized, a person who communicates the deeper through visuals and puts words when it feels relevant.
Are you ready to talk about your Brand?
My Process
I like to divide my branding process into 3 distinctive steps. It allows us to be aligned and communicate during the whole time and therefore to be more efficient.
Discovery
Defining your Brand fundamentals.
The first step to good branding is first of all understanding why we are here, what you value, what the brand wants to transmit and what makes it different. We will go through the brand fundamentals during one or several collaborative workshops. You’ll be surprised how these exercises can be revealing.
Creative Design
Creating your Visual identity.
Thanks to the discovery work, I will be able to work on visual proposals which will include the main visual elements of the Brand Identity (Logo, typography, colours, patterns, photography, iconography).
Each proposal will be illustrated with its application to a limited number of materials depending on your business. For example: a web site home page, business cards or social media feed.
Production
Producing all deliverables.
Once the Design is approved and agreed on, I will work on producing all the elements of the brand identity to deliver them in the formats and files which best match your needs.
A process which brings value to your business before even seing one single visual proposal!
Selected Projects
Labstone
Brand Strategy, Branding, Visual Identity
Alouette Nature Tours
Brand Strategy, Branding, Visual Identity