Brief
As designers are very critical of our own work, personal designer branding is one of the hardest things. I was after something timeless and minimal that would stand the test of time. I wanted to create a mark that would render well as a small icon across collaboration applications such as Figma, GitHub and Teams.
Journey
As I’m generally called ‘HCB’ in a professional environment, it made sense to focus on the initials. I was blessed with a 22 character name, so it was refreshing to communicate it in a simple mark. Previous logos have been shortened to ‘harrycb’. However, this time, the CB™ mark could appear separately from the name. Although the three semi-circles appear to be exactly geometric, the counters have been widened slightly to work better at smaller sizes.
CB™ pattern
The CB™ mark worked well as a repeating pattern, to be used on business cards and the website. By creating a small section of the pattern, it could be repeated using CSS: try the range-slider above to see the pattern in action.
Trademark
The CB™ designer brand mark is now a trademark of HarryCB Ltd in class 42 for Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Colours and typeface
I wanted to keep the colour pallet fairly minimal with a high level of contrast to work well with the simple geometric shapes. It was important for the site’s own branding not to conflict too much with the design projects being showcased. The warm grey is a continuation from my last website. The red is used sparingly, just for action elements on the website (links and buttons).
After exploring various typeface combinations, FF mark stood out for its geometry, wide shapes and large x-height for a high degree of legibility.
Business cards
For maximum impact for my designer brand, I went for a high-contrast minimal design printed on premium 350GSM stock.
See more designer branding projects
See how the custom lettering was designed for Georgiana Scott in this luxury fashion branding project.
