Sài Gòn Thơ Fest (2025) Visual Identity (P.2)

 The Vibe and The Tie - Things are not always as easy as they seem 

This time I'd like to engage with the project more intentionally in order to find out more about which type of work flow and system that works best for me. Normally applying the standard procedure would help yet, it might not be suitable for the type of clients I have in reality aka normally people with one off project with little budget. Due to many obvious constrain, as well as it is my first time in a long time to attempt a more public-facing visual identity design, I would just be as mindful as possible, but mostly, still play by ears and deal with the issues as they arise rather than super tight planning to leave no room for errors. Errors are to expected from both sides, me and client, given this is the first few projects we are actually working on and together. 

Since working for one-off event meaning working with a group of people who, themselves, are still figuring out their identity and voice as a unit, my work here is to provide them with the outlines and options of how they want to appear based on some keywords and information they have provided in the brief and available on their existing social media which are, at the moment, are still limited and non-specific, abeit somewhat being helpful enough for the time being. 

After 2 days working on the mood board, I have around 3 options with various iterations for each 

Look and Feel by minh tu vu

NOTE:
- Canva is a good tool for presentation

- To speed up the process, it's beneficial to build up my own library, vocabs

- It helps to learn to present each visual style in an informative way. Clients are interested to hear

- Provide questionnaire for clients to pinpoint which elements they would like to feature/highlight in the design 

The clients the choose these pages as strong references 

After having general feedback, I would then draft out a rough timeline for clients. This will give them the trust that I'm mindful about schedule. However, realistically speaking, later on, the schedule is usually altered due to numerous unforeseen delays from both sides. Maybe a weekly check in would be more doable.  

After getting feedback, I then prepare over the weekend for the preliminary draft of key visual and some branding elements like color palette, icons, layout etc...I also make some digital sketch of ideas with mostly placeholders to focus more on the color placement and composition. However it is hard to impart this objectives onto clients who are not so used to viewing images in its bare bone. 

IT HELPS TO START PUSHING CLIENTS FOR COPY NOW so you have some material to plan layout options with. 

This is the 2nd presentation. It took me a bit far too long to prepare for this step. Almost 3-4 days. Problem is I didn't start working manually with pen and paper and jump straight to fiddling around with typography on Illustrator, thinking that it would help me more with trying out different layout since I could move each components around more easily. This is however a huge mistakes and can be solved easily by hands by cutting out pieces of paper and moving them around.

Note: - THIS IS HIGH TIME FOR SKETCHING.  
The key for this step is to present more idea options rather than execution options

Logo & Layout by minh tu vu

The objectives of 2nd presentation is to pinpoint what to do and what NOT to do. IN this case it is more about what NOT to do. It's easy to appear a bit clueless and misdirected in front of the clients for this step but trust the process, keep calm and carry on. Clients are also very interested in seeing designer to do live-demo of their ideas in term of making minor changes to the logo. So always have some elements ready for this step (aka different typeface options of the same word, arranged neatly in illustrator etc...) 

Still think it is BEST and IDEAL to have 2nd meeting in person. 

After 2nd meeting Clients came back with clearer brief and better ideas of what they want. 

....to be continued