Schweet Life Brand Identity

PROBLEM

I’m a stickler for organization and simplicity and the categories of this blog were really starting to bug me. Some of the categories were no longer relevant because they didn’t fit my future plans for the blog. In the midst of housecleaning it became apparent that instead of just having separate categories, it would be more effective to have separate websites for my graphic design and photography work. Splitting the content would result in the websites being more focused so visitors could have greater control over the content they read. In addition, I could gather clearer insights through Google Analytics and improve search engine optimization.

SOLUTION

I considered a few other names but “Schweet” stuck in my mind. “Life” was selected because my favorite photography subjects (food, travel, cars, and architecture/interiors) are related to lifestyles. I thought the name was interesting on its own and readily lent itself to being a wordmark. The logo design phase began with me sketching the way that I saw the feeling of the word in my mind. After working through various sketches and concepts I settled on a hand-drawn “S”, a toned down capital “L” in Lavanderia Sturdy, and chose lower case Century Gothic for the other letters.

The Schweet Life website borrows a lot of its elements from the NNMPortfolio website but a few changes were made to improve the user experience. The search bar was integrated into the header, a simplified sidebar was placed on the right, and a more prominent newsletter signup box was placed on all pages. It’s expected that mobile use will increase so I decided to build a responsive website that would automatically adjust to different devices.

I created customized Twitter and Facebook profile pages that feature photos from my photography portfolio. In addition, I designed banner ads for a test campaign on the Google Display Network that are very simple and largely image based because I am beginning with a campaign where Google will choose the placements so the ads need to be able to fit into the design of a variety of websites.

Note: You can read the expanded version of this case study and view the rough sketches in the Schweet Life blog post.