New Brand and Website For Dr Jesal Pankhania
There are so many aspects of designing a new brand and website that I genuinely don't think I could pinpoint my favourite part.
From the excitement of seeing the pinned items on the Pinterest homework that my client has completed to reading and understanding the business style, personality and values they want their new brand to encompass, all the way through to the challenge of ensuring their new brand is strong and distinct.
It’s a fun creative challenge that I thoroughly enjoy.
Dr Jesal Pankhania, an award-winning dentist, philosopher and mentor approached me last year to help clarify how he should organise and collect his interests. He wanted to bring his already thriving philosophy blog - “Ink stains for your brain” - together with his new venture of providing Mentoring and Dentistry advice and guidance, all under one roof, one name, one brand.His main concern was how to create this “new world”.
Related:
As we discussed the project, it became clear that a personal brand would be the best fit for Jesal. His emphasis on being able to provide advice, guidance and information meant that this project would be unlike any other I have taken on. There was a lot to keep in mind throughout the whole project. It wasn’t going to be as straight forward as other projects, and, if I am honest, that really excited me!
1 | Client homework
Like every branding and website design project I always ask my client to complete a few required tasks beforehand so I get a better understanding of their needs. It’s a really important stage.
As part of the questions, I asked Jesal to describe his new brand with a few adjectives.
Jesal said:
Smooth
Clear
Direct
Simple
Minimalist
Classy
Clean
Funky
Modern
I also asked Jesal to create a Pinterest board, and pin items he felt visually represented the look and feel he wanted in his new brand. I do this with all my branding and website design projects as it gives me a good idea of the styles and colours they are drawn too.
2 | Moodboard
With all the homework complete, I can start to collect my ideas and create a moodboard. Also known as an inspiration board, this gives me and Jesal an idea of the visual representation of the brand I will be designing. A moodboard is a collection of images and colours that I can use as a reference point at every stage of the project, in particular, the design stages.
This is what Jesals moodboard looked like:
The moodboard oozes clear, classy but funky and modern, doesn't it?
This is definitely one of my favourite moodboards to date!
3 | Logo Concepts
It was awesome to read Jesal was really happy with the moodboard - it got signed off right away and that meant I could now start on the designing the most important aspect of the visual brand - the logo.
I had quite a few different ideas floating around in my head, and I wanted to explore using negative space. Jesal was a fan of this as I could see he had pinned quite a few cleverly designed logos on his Pinterest board.
Here were the 3 concepts I came up with:
I always create logo concepts in black and white as every logo should work well in one flat colour - this helps to ensure the type, the graphic element and the composition work well together before adding any colour.
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Experimenting with a few san serif fonts, which are naturally modern looking as they are clean and clear was fun, adjusting the tracking of the characters really helped as well.
Jesal was torn between concept 3, where he liked the font and placement, but also really liked the idea of playing with the J and P as the other two concepts showed.
That led me to create a merged concept of the logos and I presented the first revision round of concept logos:
I was slightly biased but when Jesal told me he loved the same one I did (concept 2) I was really excited. I designed a secondary logo for him to give him a little more flexibility in his new brand, too.
4 | Brand Board
Putting the brand board together really bought his brand together. Being able to see how to keep the brand consistent and seeing the other visual elements, such as the colour palette, logo variation, submark/watermark, patterns really helped.
Related:
5 | Collateral items and splash page
Once the brand board was complete and signed off I created the business cards:
...social media graphics...
..and put up a splash page (coming soon page)
..so that anyway visiting his new website would be welcomed by a correctly branded front page and social media links.
6 | Squarespace Website
The last step in the design process was to design Jesals Squarespace website. Jesal had a lot of text he needed and wanted to share on his website, he also had numerous testimonials from people for the different offerings he has.
It was important to be able to showcase that Jesal has 3 very distinct areas that are interrelated but are standalone in their own right.
This meant a few things. The design needed to:
Be clear but to the point,
Be a way of showcasing the testimonials nicely and with reference to the relevant area,
Show call to actions on every page
I’m thrilled with how this new brand and website design turned out for Jesal. I would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Check out the live site - Dr Jesal Pankhania.
What do you think of the new brand and website for Dr Jesal Pankhania?
