Building a Brand

In establishing our brand, we wanted to create the feel of a luxury product without the luxury price tag. In designing the logo, we thought about the name our group came up with, an acronym of our names, and what our group wanted to accomplish. The sun of the RAY Fashion logo indicates how our company hopes to shed light on some of the most pressing issues concerning sustainability in our society and to provide a few solutions to emphasize the positive and negative impact individuals can have on their environment. Our logo’s circular nature also affirms our commitment to circularity. The main colors, black and gold, state our belief that even in the darkest of times, we can find hope.

Logos

We created seven different versions of the logo to be used in different circumstances. The primary logo is the square black and gold version. Since our website features a darker background, we created the second logo to ensure that it would not blend into the background. The third and fourth logos are inverted colors, featuring a lighter background of light green and gray with darker spokes on the circle to emphasize the sun symbol. Logos five, six, and seven are versions of the previous logos but with a circular shape.

Colors

Our brand colors are muted, earthy tones with more golden yellow colors to mimic the sun. To emphasize our commitment to sustainability, we wanted to use more natural colors to represent our brand. The colors are mostly varying shades of green and yellow which work well together since they are near one another on the color wheel. The contrast between the lighter and darker colors also helps to emphasize our goal to stand out from other companies.

Typography

To emphasize the idea of luxury without the price tag, we chose serif fonts to emulate a modern and chic feel. Since Times New Roman is a fairly standard font, we chose it as one of our main typefaces. The other fonts are mainly for title emphasis or decoration on our website or presentations.

Brand Images

The brand images we chose also reflect the desire to stay connected with our natural environment. Photographs of mountains, forests, and beaches feature most prominently on our website to create the feeling of being immersed in nature as we strive to develop a greater connection with what lies around us.

Voice

Our brand aims to promote sustainability in as many areas of life as possible. This includes utilizing vocabulary that supports sustainable and renewable materials. Words like “lifelong” and “cyclical” re-enforce the concepts of durability and regeneration while adjectives like “conscientious” emphasize how caring about the environment and sustainability is a positive trait to have. By reducing our use of words like “consumer” and “disposable,” we encourage people to change their vocabulary and thereby change their view on how they approach purchasing goods and services. RAY Fashion is, after all, not just a good but a service to improve the lives of our consumers and the environment in which we all live.

The Website

We used the free website builder, Wix.com, to create our site which is our main point of contact for our customers. Wix allows us to post products and link social media accounts. The site also hosts our blog where we delve into who we are, what we do, and how we created our product. In using Wix, we can track the number of visitors to our website as well as other pertinent information through which we can demonstrate traction.

2D Model

Drawing our 2D model was a bit difficult since none of us had much experience in illustrating shoes. However, due to the initial simplicity of our design, we were able to create a simple illustration to show the different pieces of our shoe. The design consists of the outsole, the midsole, and the insole. Between the midsole and the insole lies the holes through which the fabric ties can be threaded. Although the 2D drawing was not the most realistic model, we were still able to illustrate the main points of our design.

Building our brand: Blog

Through the process of completing our thesis, I wanted to be able to expand the ways in which we thought about business and the institutions in which we exist. This included the written portion of our thesis project. In discussion with our advisor, we were encouraged to innovate and find creative solutions to our problems and tasks. Since we had a blog section already in place on our website, we decided to write our thesis paper in the form of a series of blog posts to garner attention to our work and ensure we were meeting our thesis deadline on time. This has allowed us to share our experiences while also marketing our product.

As a brand, RAY Fashion strives for transparency. By continually updating our progress on our project, I believe that we may come closer to achieving that aim.

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See more of our brand on social media!

Instagram @ray_fashioninc

Facebook @RayFashionINC

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