Note: This project is still active as the client is not yet licensed. For this reason, much of the content is a placeholder.
Nicole Realty
This project involved working with a studio team in a fast-paced environment. In addition to my layout, branding, social media, and Web design work, I researched legal requirements for real estate marketing. I had to be flexible since this research led to making unexpected design changes throughout the revisions. My logo was featured in the Design and Digital Media department’s Year End Show.
Deliverables with my logo
Deliverables with the final logo
Social media templates
For sale
General “evergreen” post
Case study: Research, logo, and business card
Overview
Nicole wants to get into real estate as a career change. For this project, I worked with Flagship Design Studio at Sacramento City College to prepare her brand identity ahead of time. My team members were Elizabeth Yang (Project Manager), Anahita Ghassempour, Erik Nuñez, Brian Rodriguez, and Robyn Waxman (Faculty Art Director/Professor). We mostly each made our own versions of things, but we were inspired by each other’s ideas. Nicole choose to use Brian’s logo (with some small updates by Elizabeth) and one of Elizabeth’s color palettes. (I don’t consider that to be a failure on my part. Out of five students, the client could only choose one logo.)
Initial research
Before even writing interview questions, I had to learn a little about the real estate industry and the challenges that lay ahead. I took a look at some other real estate websites, and there’s one thing I noticed immediately: real estate sites typically have very specialized searching and listing features! This is something that, on WordPress, would require a plugin. From my experience, though, plugins often have accessibility problems. We eventually decided after the interview that a simple site without integrated listings would better serve the client’s needs anyway.
Client interview
Each team member contributed interview question possibilities. Here are mine:
- Are you going to be a real estate agent, or will Nicole Oscar Real Estate be a firm that hires agents?
- What kind of agent will you be (realtor, broker, buying agent, selling agent)? Residential, commercial, industrial, or land real estate?
- What cities or counties will you or won’t you work in?
- Who are your direct competitors?
- Did any frustrations with other real estate agents motivate you to start your own business? If so, please talk about your experiences.
- How do you want your clients to perceive your business?
- Might any materials need to cater to a secondary target audience? If so, who?
- Are there any existing businesses, organizations, or people that you admire or aspire to be like? In which ways?
- Are there any examples of logos, business cards, or websites that you like the branding of (regardless of whether or not they’re in the real estate industry)?
- What type of content do you want to post on social media? How often will you post? On which platforms?
- In addition to the logo, business card, and website, Robyn said you’ll probably need template flyers for sales, social media templates, and swag. Is that correct?
- Will the completed flyers be printed at home or at at a printing shop?
- For filling out templates, would you prefer something Web-based, or do you have software you want to use (like Acrobat)?
- Of the deliverables we’ve agreed to, which do you think people will see most frequently?
The logo
I first created the following list of words to brainstorm ideas for symbols:
Bold represents things that I think are the most promising.
Adjectives
- Approachable
- Relatable
- Trustworthy
- Warm
- Cozy
Characteristics of logos she likes
- Optimistic
- Soft-edged
- Art deco (not sure if that’s a good idea, but putting it on here to keep it in consideration)
Nouns and concepts
- Home
- House
- One-story
- Two-story
- Mobile home
- Condo
- House
- Home parts
- Door (could be used symbolically as a way in)
- Window (could symbolize her honesty and transparency)
- Rounded window (common on front doors and eliminates the problem of hard edges)
- Roof (probably too similar to Pizza Hut)
- Chimney (the most obvious connection to “warm” and “cozy,” but it might seem too outdated).
- Fireplace?
- Family (thinking of those who are approachable, relatable, and trustworthy)
- Friends
- Holding hands (probably too similar to the Allstate logo)
- Smile
- Furniture (warm, cozy)
- Arrow (to represent moving from one place to another)
- A line is probably better for the same thing.
Noun-adjective pairs
- Warm smile
- Optimistic window
- Approachable/relatable/trustworthy family/friends
- Warm/cozy furniture/fireplace
- Soft-edged arrow?
- Curving line
Here are my first concepts (made in Illustrator since I cannot draw on paper). At this point, I was just playing around with ideas from my list of words. None of these quite “clicked” with me, but the upcoming group feedback would help tremendously.
In the second round of logos, I based all my designs on some feedback from Robyn. She liked my idea of the rounded front door window. She thought it also looks like sun rays, which is something I had never even considered. So, she requested that I combine that with a house. I tried to design the options so that they read as both a window and sun rays. (The very rounded house used in group 2 is based on one of Elizabeth’s sketches). I provided two typeface choices: New Farm was my preference, but Quicksand was a backup in case we needed something available on Google Fonts.
It turns out that what I created isn’t quite what Robyn had in mind, so she made me a sketch of her idea that became the basis of everything moving forward. Two variations of the symbol are shown here. One of the most important lessons I learned is to use a limited graphic vocabulary to make it more cohesive. So these designs are based entirely on semicircles and lines. With this symbol, that involved making a challenging compromise because a more circular form looks better on the window, but a more oval form looks better on the doorway. I think the second one is a better compromise.
More experimentation with form followed. The concepts with the sun rays coming out of the rounded houses did not make it to the next phase.
These logos were included in the team presentation for the client to review.
While the client was making a decision, I choose to continue with logo 2 from above and add color to it. I chose blue for its to association with trustworthiness and yellow to make the lines in the window more closely resemble sun rays.
Business card
I created the first version of the business card simply as a visual for Nicole to see how the logo would look on a business card. As such, it’s a very simple design, without too much thought given to the details. I felt that this design suffered from the problem of having everything be centered: the layout lacks creativity.
The second version is, in many ways, remarkably similar to the final design. To modernize the business card, I removed the address and added social media handles. Since the rounded treatment of the image gives it the feeling of a profile photo, I placed it next to the social media info. This also solved the problem of the layout not feeling creative since that section is in two columns. It no longer feels like everything is centered, resulting in a more interesting and balanced design. The subtle background prevents the space from feeling empty.
By the time of the next revision, Nicole had chosen the final logo and color palette. Otherwise, the design is similar to the previous version. I changed the text to Avenir to match the logo.
One criticism about the previous card is that the back feels repetitive since the logo is already on the front. I felt that the new logo’s roof provided an ideal solution. It allows the viewer to identify the brand from the back side without repeating the full logo. I’m also happy with the color choices. Since the back is entirely decorative, it allows the two brand colors to be used together without needing to worry about contrast ratios for accessibility.
With the basics now in place, the next few revisions consisted of minor refinements. Most notably, I realized that the amount of extra space between groups of information was so slight that it ran together, so I increased that space. I also changed the text to Arial since I learned that Avenir (or at least the version of it included in macOS) does not allow for editable embedding in its licensing. This isn’t ordinarily a problem, but, in this case, the business card is a template to be edited later by the client in Acrobat Pro when she gets her license (and she won’t have access to Avenir if she’s using Windows). This impacted the other deliverables as well since I chose to set all text in Arial for consistency.
On the back, the roof now appears correctly centered because Elizabeth updated it to make it symmetrical. And in order to be truer to the form of the logo, I sized it so that the points of the roof touch the card’s edges on all three sides instead of extending into the bleed area.
I would have thought that would be the finalized business card. But there’s a plot twist! When I was working on the social media part of the project, I did a Web search to see if the license number was legally required on posts. In addition to answering that question, I found that the requirements reach much further than we realized. According to page 7 of the document, the broker’s name and title have to be included, which must be equally prominent as the agent’s name and title, which must be equally prominent as the fictitious business name (in the logo). This means that it wasn’t just a matter of adding another line of text. There was no obvious place to put the information since I had balanced the white space evenly throughout the card. My first thought was to reduce the size of the logo and place the broker’s details directly beside it. But the information did not fit. I eventually made 3 successful variations. I chose to use the one with the broker’s information at the bottom center because it felt most natural and balanced. I also like how the placement of the broker’s information in the horizontal center reinforces the similarity of the formatting to Nicole’s name and title.
Conclusion
If you’re wondering why I chose to write a case study about this particular project, that valuable lesson is why. The experience of needing to add additional information and make layout changes to a business card I considered to be complete taught me the importance of being flexible and open to change in a professional environment. A bit of uncertainty is bound to happen from time to time, and I have shown that I’m up to the challenge.
Ordinarily, I’d wrap up this case study by reflecting on the impact of my work. As the project is still active, I don’t have the necessary data to do that yet. But I can say that when our team sent all our logos to Nicole for review, she loved them all and had quite a hard time choosing! I’m excited to see what the big-picture impact will be after the project launches, and I’ll update this case study when the time comes.
Credits
Team members
- Elizabeth Yang
- Anahita Ghassempour
- Erik Nuñez
- Brian Rodriguez
Sources
- Tote bag mockup from https://mockupfree.co/product/tote-bags-mockup-free-psd
- “About me” page header illustration based on one by John Hain from Pixabay