The Creative Direction, Design and Branding of Fortune & Freedom
For this project I was tasked with creating the branding and design for a financial publication called Fortune & Freedom. For this particular project Southabnk Investment Research had formed a partnership with a high profile public figure who would draw both great interest and scrutiny to the project. With my designs likely to be seen by over 2 million followers on a variety of social media platforms the pressure was on to deliver a clear, concise and highly professional design solution to the brand.
After extensive research of branding, and use cases of publications in the same field my initial gauge to get stakeholder feedback is combine fonts and colour-ways that I feel can work for the project. Here you will see I am testing ideas by combing a variety of font styles, investigating typographical solutions and combining colours that will help me develop my idea. At this stage I will even include some ideas that I'm not 100% convinced with but that the client might like. It's so important as a Head of Design to put personal preference to one side in order to head further towards a final solution:
After extensive research of branding, and use cases of publications in the same field my initial gauge to get stakeholder feedback is combine fonts and colour-ways that I feel can work for the project. Here you will see I am testing ideas by combing a variety of font styles, investigating typographical solutions and combining colours that will help me develop my idea. At this stage I will even include some ideas that I'm not 100% convinced with but that the client might like. It's so important as a Head of Design to put personal preference to one side in order to head further towards a final solution:
Once the logo ideas had been reviewed by the Publisher, CMO and all major stakeholders and a direction was decided on I started to put together a branding Style Guide. Encompassing colour combinations, typography / font styles, icons and button styles this would help us develop a strong, clear and instantly recognisable identity:
One of the main drivers in making this publication a success was a new website to house 1,000's of articles, reports and encompass sign-up functionality for new readers to subscribe to the publication. Initially I started by putting together ideas for the menu bar at the top of the website:
Before designing a full website wireframe:
Now that the identity was established, the branding follows through on to all promotional and editorial material including reports, web ads, social media marketing campaigns, email templates and newsletters:
The final solution was met with an overwhelming response culminating in over 100,000 sign ups on the day of launch. Fortune & Freedom continues with the same clear, concise and strong identity today and has generated millions of pound in subscription revenue for the company.
