How I designed a brand identity for a youtube channel

What is it?

A step-by-step process of how I designed a youtube tech brand called Virtual Voyager!

Virtual Voyager — A YouTube channel that focuses on aesthetic tech content with great storytelling, our content revolves around reviewing innovative tech products, electric vehicles and short documentaries on disruptive tech products and their strategies.

Why did I do it?

As a part of wrapping up the first cohort of Brand experience design, we had to apply our learning and understanding of storytelling and visual design from the cohort in this Final assignment.

My niche was technology which was perfect since I am a Tech geek. It would be a great exercise to put my perspective on how a tech youtube channel should look, speak and feel. From years of watching tech news, reviews

How did I do it?

Goal

The purpose of this assignment was to understand the problem statement and create a brand identity and visual design for a YouTube channel.

Discover

I started with light research on a bunch of youtube channels that focus on anything tech, not restricted to a particular category.

The pattern is similar among all these creators, most of them are good storytellers and have minimalistic styles when it comes to aesthetics. I feel that somewhere to stand out from the regular crowd, one has to strategise equally good storytelling, and production quality while being packaged differently.

To quote from Austin Kleon’s book: “You are, in fact, a mashup of what you choose to let into your life.”

Some of the YouTubers I thought worth stealing from:

Once I had gathered up some info, I could visualise how my channel had to appear, there were two things that my brand had to focus on

• Develop a unique visual direction so that the brand differentiates itself from the rest of the tech competitors and also becomes scalable to other mediums.
• Also, the tone of the brand should appear more clickbaity with some bold thumbnails that stand out
• As per the content that the brand has to focus on, I wanted this to represent the business side of tech and why a certain tech exists and how it has impacted the psychology of an average consumer.

The hardest part of the assignment was to come up with the name, I wanted it to represent a journey that viewers would experience when they would come across my channel. I turned to the internet again to spark some ideas on naming the brand. Here are a few names that I curated:

• Tech treat
• Tech by Harsha
• Metatech
• Tech Voyage
• Virtual voyager

Moodboard

The mood boards I researched had this raw and natural sense in them, which helps me stand out as a brand and also represent a sort of organic and bold feeling, which is rare in this particular niche.

curated moodboard

Design

Identity design

• For the logo, I wanted to keep it simple and clean so that it can work in any place whether it is small or big, Gives me the ability to animate it and place it on different surfaces.
• I decided to go with a rocket as a logo mark since it is easier to recognise and fits the concept of a voyager.
• I also went with a tall and bold type, standing out among all the thumbnails in the search.
• I tried various logo variations and chose the one compatible with the typeface.
• There are three things that I look for when I am designing a logo: recognisability, scalability and readability. And I make sure that these three things go hand in hand with the brand.

sketching

Final logo mark

Colour palette and Typography

• I chose bright yellow as my primary colour as it evokes a sense of urgency while it helps the brand stand out from the rest of the competition.
• The colour yellow could also help as a guide in various branding collaterals.
• I went with a tall typeface(Anton) that makes the brand look louder so that the text could be visible and readable on smaller screens while maintaining the brand’s appearance as loud and bold as possible.

Visual design

• The brand consistency on youtube starts from its cover image, which I designed first and made sure that it held all the various types of topics this brand would talk about.
• Also, I quickly made some youtube thumbnails and social posts to showcase the consistency while making them easily recognisable.

Mockup of the youtube channel

Splash screens & animation

• This exercise shows the scalability of the brand by visualising a potential app.
• Like any app, three splash screens would guide the user in their voyage and help them become a member.
• I visualised this concept of the rocket guiding the user from one screen to another screen, which could be visually very rewarding to the user.
• These splash screens will guide the user on how the app could be beneficial by joining the community of tech enthusiasts while enjoying the best tech content.

That’s all Folks!