The Spring Festival of 2018 has passed, and I always wanted to share the design ideas of lofter New Year logo with you, but I haven't sorted it out until now. I hope this article can give you some ideas and references.
Whenever the festival is over, the app icons of all sizes in the market have undergone a festive dress up. As a visual designer, we need to think about how to design a design that is consistent with the product brand and can create a festive atmosphere. Take Lofter New Year's icon design as an example to share the design ideas and methods at that time.
Lofter is one of NetEase's products with relatively old qualifications. It focuses on interest communities, encourages originality, and aims to let interesting users have their own exquisite circles. How to change the new year's clothes for lofter, mainly from the following five stages to explain the design process.
1. Design Background
When receiving a requirement, the designer will analyze the core issues of the requirement from the following three aspects:
1.1 Business Level
What is the purpose of this dress change? This behavior is not in line with Lofter's brand tonality. After communication, the business side hopes to change the clothes to render the atmosphere of the New Year, attract the attention of users, stimulate the interaction between users and products, and then improve the daily activity of products;
1.2 Design level
In addition to setting off the festive atmosphere, designers should design more refined and creative designs, which can more effectively convey the brand's concept, transmit positive energy to users, and enhance users' emotional cognition.
1.3 User level
This skinning needs to take into account the user's acceptance, whether it can let users perceive the meaning of the product, and whether it can bring more intimacy to users.
2. Design Analysis
After clarifying the design requirements, it is necessary to analyze the requirements. The designer conducts design extraction from three steps: theme association, keyword extraction, and visual material extraction.
2.1 Theme association
Diverging thinking on the theme of the New Year and traditional culture, and collecting related vocabulary. As shown in the picture: paper-cuts, snowflakes, couplets, snowmen, plum blossoms, moiré patterns, retro windows, lanterns, firecrackers, fireworks, big red, bronzing, etc.
2.2 Keyword Extraction
Classification and induction of color, shape and quality according to the vocabulary of thinking divergence:
Color : Color is the most superficial perception of users. According to Lofter's tonality, we position the color in the red series that can reflect the festive atmosphere and the more noble and elegant bronzing gold series.
Shape : It can be refined and designed according to elements such as paper-cuts, couplets, snowmen, and retro doors and windows.
Material : It can be decorated with relevant patterns and textures, making the design more refined and more festive. For example, moiré, fringe, etc.
2.3 Visual material refinement
For the extracted keywords, perform visual element matching, and collect the corresponding visual materials for design reference. The following pictures are only part of the reference pictures for display:
For the refinement of visual materials, three design directions are formed:
Scheme 1 : Design the scheme through the elements of the Spring Festival couplets and the bronzing texture;
Scheme 2 : The scheme is extended through the visual materials of paper-cut and moiré;
Option 3 : Design and refine through retro doors and windows and snowman-related materials.
3. Design Execution
3.1 Sketching
Many designers ignore this step when making designs. Although the drawing of sketches does not need to be exquisite, it is indispensable. Designers can easily and directly present their inspiration and ideas by drawing sketches, and conduct preliminary design evaluations for relevant design schemes, so as to better grasp the feasibility and creativity of the design.
According to the design analysis, the three solutions are as follows:
Assessed from the sketch stage, the feasibility of the design is more in line with the design requirements, and the creativity of the design needs to be further scrutinized through the drawing of the design drawing.
3.2 Presentation of the design draft
The first draft of the design is mainly for the b2b data software drawing of the sketch drawing scheme. This time the drawing is mainly to show the big effect, and the details can be carefully scrutinized later. The three options are as follows:
For the first draft of the design, the visual interior conducts a design review:
In terms of design creativity : Scheme 1 is quite satisfactory in creativity and lacks some design features; Scheme 2 has more ideas, and the design level and theme performance need to be further optimized; Scheme 3 is creative, and the combination of elements and fish themes needs to be further optimized.
In terms of design language , all three schemes can highlight the theme of the festival, the atmosphere is relatively strong, and the user perception is relatively strong.
In terms of design effect : Scheme 1 is simpler and has weaker design features; Scheme 2 has a sense of hierarchy and has more characteristics; Scheme 3 has certain characteristics, and the details of the design effect need to be scrutinized.