Edwy Woo – All Purpose Creative

All Purpose Creative is an award-winning design agency crafting digital learning and corporate social responsibility experiences.
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Team

Joseph Coombes
Gabriel Hendry
Chris Samuel
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Role

Brand & Identity
Art Direction
Web Design
UX Design
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Year

2021 – 2022

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With the desire to establish itself and find opportunities to collaborate with mission driven organizations, All Purpose Creative needed a brand identity that can both demonstrate the capabilities of the organization, as well as reflect the personality of the team.

My role was to establish a cohesive brand system that will direct the All Purpose's overall visual expression. This system will be flexible and ever-evolving, ranging from functional to expressive contexts.

Designing for both unity and individual expression
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One of the main goals was to establish a visual expression that could represent the design agency as a cohesive unit, yet providing room for the individuals to add their own mark to it. The solution was to design for a spectrum, from functional to expressive.
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Layering functional and expressive elements
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It was about finding the right moments to be professional, but other times to dial it up and be playful. Structural elements of grid and type would play a functional role, whereas color and humanist elements are used when the brand needs to be expressive.
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Creating a mark
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The concept of the asterisk has both literal and metaphoric purposes. The asterisk indicates that there is something more to discovered, as well as being a guiding northstar. It could be used as a force multiplier, implying that impact can be exponentially increased when forces join together in a partnership.

The hand-drawn quality of the asterisk is a juxtaposition of the neutrally set workmark, a nod to the human qualities underlying the digital experiences.
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Setting the foundations
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Establishing a type scale and grid system is foundation of the brand system. The approach was to establish something neutral, so it works for functional assets when professionalism is required, leaving room for other elements to be more expressive. In addition, templates for presentations and social media assets were created for scalability and consistency.
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A spectrum of color
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The color palette was designed to be representative of the character of the team as well as resonating with potential clients. The approach was a spectrum, from humble and grounded to bold and playful. The objective was to create a palette where the color combinations are delightfully unexpected - approachable but intriguing.
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Gestures
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To retain the humanist essence of the hand-drawn asterisk, a scalable system of gestures were created to embed human touches throughout the brand expression. Gestures play a role in highlighting content, adding background texture, and being illustrative in nature.
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Graphic vehicles
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A system of graphic vehicles works complementary to the gestures, creating opportunities for more playful and expressive moments. These vehicles are used enhance the content in a composition, being able to be dialed up or down depending on the context.

Bringing the brand to life.
Creating branded touchpoints through the intentional use of grid, type, color, and humanist layers on a spectrum from functional to expressive.
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Balancing a multitude of voices.
Designing for a team with a variety of needs and perspectives requires a scalable and flexible system.
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The key challenge was maintaining quality yet providing ways to be expressive. The lesson learned in this process was to optimize the experience for the non-designer. By establishing a solid base through easily modifiable templates and leaving space open for the expression to be push further over time.