The third stage of this new project was to get cracking and mould it into a brand. I left off the last blog with a long list of pointless products as well as a name for my brand. This development stage has been the stage where i have evolved it into something I am proud of. Also I soon realised through this stag that I was stepping out of my comfort zone into an unknown territory of mine. I had never experienced designing a full UI/UX website for an online store. So this has benefited me dramatically to look at the functionality of my design etc.
Firstly I had a vision in my head of the brand but I went and had a very helpful 1to1 with Steve Lloyd. I brought to him where I was at with Berguna. I explained what Berguna meant. As I am 50% Malaysian, i thought it would be tidy to have the word useful translated into Malay, hence the word Berguna. I juggled with the name possibly adding Inv on the end to stand for inventions but it looked aesthetically cleaner without. Also to incorporate a call to action or logo, I went down the strategic route and used the symbol for knowledge. As i felt that the products i have come up with take some knowledge to view things differently, they aren't actually pointless products, they are useful. Something I soon realised when speaking to both Xavi and Steve.
Above you can see the notes which I took down with steve during my one to one. This was a fundamental chat as it was the first part of solidifying the elements of Berguna. I decided that the business rationale behind Berguna was to create products which patched up different irritations or things that piss me off as a creative or in life in general. This I felt was a creative way to express a story of my personality and alternative angle of viewing products. I decided that Berguna was a brand that had Irritations at the forefront of every product. An irritation that I had experienced in my head was the key behind every bit of copy and design. Also with steve I decided on my two outputs. Part of my self promotion strategy I tied in with this project as I planned for output one to create a company instagram to post up my products with a unique paragraph of creative copy whilst tagging in actual brands which link to whatever I was selling as well as agencies and certain individuals who would be attracted to them. My second main output I had figured i was going to have to step out my comfort zone and design a full website online store for Berguna. UI/UX was something I never really had touched on so this opened up a new door of learning and skills development. Something which I felt would benefit me in the long run preparing me for my full time job as a Creative and Design associate at Lagarde Sports. As one of the things I would be doing there would be creating assets for brands such as Aldi, Mcvities and other homeland brands to then bridge the gap between them and the major sports teams which Lagarde Work with.
Below you can see the initial artboards when I was deciding on the different style for the brand. I went from bootlegging marks and spencers, woolworths to finally deciding on binning that and going with the Malaysian Translation for the word Useful. Which is Berguna. I wanted to have this part of the brand in there to make it personal to me as an individual. I also tied into the brand a call to action of the knowledge symbol.
I went about and gathered a few inspirations for my web design and the layout. I noticed how my brand was heading in the direction of a premier innovative brand. So i opted for brands such as Tesla, Dyson and Apple for design references. The way apple wrote their copy on their website attracted me also. As you can see below I have been attracted to the clean designs of the websites of Dyson, Tesla and John Lewis. As I didnt want to present Berguna as a cheap student project. I wanted to attack this and give off the highest quality impression for my brand.
Now I had the brand information nailed down and also my two outputs decided upon, it was time to think about how many products I was going to shortlist and present on my site. I had a list of about 34 products originally but in terms of quality and consistency I shortlisted a list of 15. A decision I made also was to categorise my products into five categories. These being Home, Beauty, Travel, Leisure and Work. I felt thes offered a wide range to cater for all types of people. Judging from my shortlist of products as well I was going to target Gym lads, vegan, fashion and lifestyle bloggers and even pets. Again this was a whole different type of target audience approach compared to my usual 18-24 year olds I always work towards. Another way I felt I was spreading my wings a bit.
Finally for the development stage I was preparing and nailing down sketches of how the UI/UX was going to logistically work. These as you can see below were very messy but offered a system which in the long run would function smoothly. Keeping the site down to three sliding home pages, with five categories and also an informative OUR DNA section offering information about what drives Berguna into the future.
The next stage I was prepared for which was the production stage…
I also created a submission checklist which I would check back to and highlight what elements I had completed and what I had left. This would allow me to hit my targets and get my submission done on time, planning and preparation prevents piss poor performance.