Studio Brief 01, Logotype - Feedback session and Evaluation

Our final crit session was a different format to our interim crit one. Instead of presenting our work, we were simply put to leave our presentations on display while the alternate group went around writing feedback. I found this to be a double edged sword in some ways. By doing our crits this way it alleviates some of the stress of actually presenting our ideas and giving feedback towards our peers verbally, however by not being able to present our ideas, I felt that the other students may not have fully understood my reasons for design processes and final outcomes because my presentations was just images, intended for me to speak on. Thus I need to work on how I will be able to present my ideas visually. Another flaw in my feedback was I didn't provide any paper for people to write feedback on unlike some of the other students. This may have limited the number of feedback I could have received.

Despite the mixed feelings on the feedback session the overall consensus was that the re-branding was a relative success. People preferred the more sophisticated outcome of my American Apparel. It appeared to be more professional and more grown up. Those choices in typefaces did accomplish my aim to get rid of the controversy and sexualised ads associated with the old logo and they saw it in a new perspective. 

However the final resolutions were far from my original ideas. It was only after the interim crit and looking at their competitors that I realised that in order for American Apparel to take themselves seriously, their logotype needs to reflect that. There was no need for the addition of colour and to shorten their name to AA. As Massimo Vignelli's talks about a company's equity, there is no need to radically change a company's already established identity in the market. This was a major influence in one of my final resolutions for this brief, where the revised logotype was just a loosely kerned version of the original logo. But yet it did successfully in creating the sophisticated grown up look I was aiming for. 

Actively getting primary research was invaluable. It was useful to get an opinion from someone who actually works in American Apparel. It gave me a better perspective of how they are viewed as a brand. Furthermore interviewing one of the shop assistants helped me with my idea generation.

I asked openly what people thought of the removal of the space in between American and Apparel.  Some commented that the deletion worked well with the upper and lowercase because they agreed with my reasoning, however there were some that did say that it was harder to read making the name visually 'uncomfortable'. This is where I would have preferred to present my ideas due to the fact I had sound reasons for the deletion of the space. On the other hand however, the general public won't have access to these reasons thus I have to think about the decisions objectively and thus feedback becomes critical for the formations of design decisions.