When I work on a visual identity, I don't just create a logo, a style guide, and set up rules. I create a vision where the graphic materialization of ideas will create a chain reaction that will make a brand distinct, recognizable, and meaningful. Well, that sounds wonderful, but how do I achieve that? Through creative thinking, the design process, and experience. Given enough time and practice, patterns and rhythm of things start to become familiar, and design decisions, while at first seeming to be instinctual, later become rational decisions.
It's not every day that one gets the chance to assist and contribute to a man's entire life's work. In this visual identity case study, I talk about the responsibility and approach to handling such a delicate matter.
Client Profile
The What? The sound Designer, Music Composer, and super interesting person, Cosmin Mirza is one name you will hear over and over when you enter the community of video games in Romania. He is the guy you go to when your game needs audio design, sound effects, foley, and music composition. His experience of over 14 years has helped him create an effective process that assures his clients that not only are their needs fulfilled, but his creative vision will take the audio in video games to the highest standards. His work covers indie games, triple-A titles from big studios, as well as mobile games, and all kinds of crazy and beautiful projects. I invite you to check his website for more details.
The When
When I met Cosmin Mirza about a decade ago and we started working together, his sound design and music for a video game studio were called Audio Cornfield. At his request, I turned his love for Science Fiction into an alien head, and that served as his logo for a few good years. Naturally, things changed over the years, and Cosmin's studio developed into more of a personal brand. He became well-known in the video games industry as he organized meetups and brought people with the same interest in video games into a community. Working with people directly created this dynamic where his name was on everyone’s lips to the point that there were even memes created by those close to him as a form of love and appreciation.
A few years later, during one of our hangouts, he expressed his wish to rebrand himself and explained to me the bigger picture that he plans to execute. We had lots of meetings where we discussed how I could help him in his journey and what I deliver so he could build his visual identity and be in line with his vision.
The why.
Cosmin found himself in a position of being well-connected in the video games industry and had a reputation for being one of the best. I know the man personally; he just is. When he proposed a rebrand, I agreed instantly, because positioning creates openings in the markets. In our case, repositioning himself as a personal brand under the name of Cosmin Mirza created a gap in the market for video game studios and developers who are looking for the right sound designer to create sound and music for their games. Creating a secondary brand under the name of AudioSchool positioned Cosmin in the market as a trustworthy teacher and expert who is willing to share his knowledge with people who are looking to learn the craft. The space created allowed for both sides of his business to differentiate and become more appealing to customers who find themselves at different ends of the market spectrum.
The how.
“I would love for a logo that has a pictogram and my name.” I agree, I said. “But wait, there is more. Lately, I’ve started passing my knowledge to people who want to become sound designers and I offer now services of 1 on 1 class. So I decided to develop 2 brands. One will be my name, in which I will offer my services as I did until now, and another one which will be a platform where I can teach others my craft through 1 on 1 sessions, video courses, and written material.”
I was impressed by his plan and it got me so excited that the only thing I asked was “When do we start?”. So, we initiated the plan, we had the audit so we could gather data and build the groundwork after which we defined the structure of these two brands, we established how they communicate consistently and then we went into preparing the content and the Visual Design.
Briefing and Challenges
His brands are Cosmin Mirza and AudioSchool. cosminmirza.net is described as approachable, creative, and professional, while audioschool.ro is knowledgeable, creative, and resourceful. Their audience falls into two different categories. The target audience for cosminmirza.net is video game studios and game developers from Europe and the USA. In the other corner, we have audioschool.ro, which focuses on students who play video games and adults, musicians who want to pivot their careers to the gaming industry, aged 18-40 years.
When it comes to competitors, there are a lot of composers/sound designers out there, and since he is at such a high standard, the visual identity for Cosmin Mirza had to reflect that. No doubt.
AudioSchool.ro doesn’t have a direct competitor. Sure, there are people out there who are teaching others sound design and music, but none are this specific, and none of them have a targeted niche like Cosmin has, which is video games. If I may, there is no one of his caliber on the market yet. He might blush when he reads this, but it’s true.
Cosmin believes in real connection, and that’s why his approach to customers is the social game. He likes to go out and grab a few beers, get to know his clients really well, connect with them, and deliver solutions that are oriented to their actual needs. On the teaching side, he offers step-by-step guidance, where his over 14 years of experience in the industry have painted a clear vision of what his students need and how to offer the right resources.
Why did you want to rebrand yourself?
“I wanted the Cosmin Mirza brand to be perceived as more approachable and firm, professional, and a clear identity, unity across all the media.”
What about the AudioSchool?
“For AudioSchool I didn’t have a visual identity and while I tried using AI to generate a logo, I was dissatisfied with the results.”
It was hard for him to give me full liberty to do my craft and to come up with ideas that would help him along his journey, but in the end, it was worth it, or so he says. So I made a case study not for one but for two projects that have to be distinct but at the same time similar enough so you can see that they are related. How did I achieve that? Keep on reading.
Visual Identity Case Study Step by Step
To typeface or not? In the book "The Elements of Typographic Style", the author Robert Bringhurst refers to typography as "the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form." Why do I mention this? Because my present case study is, in fact, a family of two wordmarks. Sure, graphic elements such as the 'waves' and the 'dots' are there, but they are mere decorations to the actual logotypes. The attributes that make a 'good' wordmark are subjective, and the opinions are varied, but I believe that typography in logo design should be legible, clear, and visually appealing to the public.
I decided that a custom wordmark made from scratch would be the perfect visual materialization since the industry was already familiar with the name. I started sketching letters and experimented with various forms. I intended to keep some of the old Audio Cornfield imprints of Sci-Fi, so I built what is now the Cosmin Mirza Logo. The unique typeface adds to the character, conveying a state of mind and a vision that allows the brand to show its richness.
The brand is an extension of the person. Complexity is mashed into dense but simple geometric forms using typography that shows the magnetism and eccentricity of the human side. The logotype is a graphic object in its own right, not just a signature through typography that is there just to complete a pictorial mark. The written word on display is taken in by seeing and not by hearing; that is why good design communicates effectively.
The logo for Cosmin Mirza has a graphic element, but in our case, it is secondary to the name logotype. In our case, the type makes the logo. For the graphic element, I went back to typography and used the letter ‘C,’ which stands for connection, community, and charming. These are the adjectives that define him and his story. Sound waves are a subtle element here that uses beautiful and basic geometry, making it as organic as a water ripple and keeping the symbol at the border of abstract and letterform logo design.
Carrying the same philosophy to AudioSchool, and using the same approach, I focused on the typographic form. I advised Cosmin to stay away from a basic representation of his activity that could be seen all over the place and already used by his competitors. Let’s focus on what makes his business fresh and unique and add character to a visual identity that will surpass the passing trends. Trends which in my view, they die faster than they are created.
My mission was for both brands to exceed the visual cliché that is in the industry of sound design, music, and video games. When Cosmin showed me his first iteration made for AudioSchool with the help of an AI, it was clear to me that he wasn’t convinced about the results and I believe he knew deep down in his heart that none of those would match what we already started with the CosminMirza.net. And we did it together because, in this project, the results were driven by the project and not by our personal preferences.
Every visual aspect of a brand must have meaning and logic that stand for an idea.
I approached the AudioSchool Logo with the same philosophy and typography as a standalone graphic. The 3 dots made out of 0’s represent the musicality of the word and the rhythm. Taking the dots apart, we built a series of visual cues that will be used in building the rest of the visual identity. Cosmin decided to use them on the website as well and that was a strong validation for how powerful their identifiability is.
Typography as a tool of communication
Developing the visual identity forward brought me to the typefaces and font selection. We do have a custom logotype but we don’t have an entire font family based on that. And we don’t have to. Keeping the unicity of the letters just for the logo design will help in creating a distinct mark over time. Using a font family for documents, websites, and print materials boils down to style, readability, and the personality we desire for the brand identity. We needed something close to our wordmark which has sharp corners, is a sans serif, and is modern. We needed a Grotesque, something out of this world. Enter Space Grotesk.
I experimented with quite a few font families and went from Montserrat to Roboto, but I wanted something with personality. This brand represents a creative person, after all. Space Grotesk offered the small and subtle details for a font with character. It is one of the few fonts which is a Sans Serif that has uppercase letters that could be classified as Slab Serif. The lowercase 'g' and 'y' have unique and geometric descenders that were in line with the logotype, and the overall crisp angles were extremely appealing. The cherry on top was that this font had a Mono version which worked wonders for the AudioSchool wordmark. It is as if it was written. Me nem nesa
Color
I started working on the website before we refined the final version of the logo. Seeing the logo and the typography in action on the website helped me get a clear picture of how to tie everything together. After a lot of back and forth, Cosmin decided to let me have the final word on color. In our case, I decided to use a single color – orange – with the sole purpose of unifying and facilitating recognition and building equity as a brand. Not having a strong market of competitors gave us a huge palette to pick from to make both CosminMirza and AudioSchool distinct through color. The hue of orange we ended up using proved to work on both black and white and as the accent color for icons, graphic elements, or just to emphasize the written word.
Colors inherently may contain subjective meanings. What would orange mean?
"People often describe the color orange as bright, happy, and uplifting." (Tham DSY, Sowden PT, Grandison A, et al. A systematic investigation of conceptual color associations. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.)
One thing that I wanted to convey with color was to be attention-grabbing, and orange does just that. Being a combination of red and yellow, both of which are associated with energy, puts our orange as a symbol of vitality and spirit.
Later on, when developing the AudioSchool visuals, we kept the same color and the same font family and that is how we closed the circle of having consistency across multiple brands.
Using frames in design as functional decoration.
A frame is "a fundamental element of visual communications and can be used to separate, organize, unify, contain and distinguish, as well as increase visibility and immediacy in any visual message". - Richard Poulin, The Language of Graphic Design.
I would say that frames were one of the main elements I used for Cosmin Mirza's visual identity. You can see them on the website, you find them on the banners, and even on the social media templates. Being a sound designer and not having visual material to show for, I found that using frames to organize his words was a good decision for a couple of reasons. They are both aesthetic as a decorative element and functional by reinforcing the viewer's understanding of the information presented. It allowed for these frames to be used in multiple formats without losing visual consistency. Using fine lines of 1px kept the identity clean and allowed for the information and photos to be the most important elements.
For Cosmin Mirza, we created the website, favicon, social media layouts, banners, text style, patterns, photography style, and logo with the brand guide.
Cosmin Mirza Website
For the website, I kept the visual identity consistent and applied the same rules as I did on the social media layouts, prints, and banners. The orange worked great as an accent color for our Call To Action buttons, as well as for the icons and the small subtitles. The sections of the home page kept a classic, tried-and-tested wireframe of Hero Header, About, Services, a beautiful Project Spotlight, and a closing section of past companies that acquired his services.
The Projects Page was the most difficult page to create because Cosmin asked me to design a layout where he could add both video and music. While on the desktop it is not a hard decision to make, this has to be responsive and work on mobile and tablet as well. I ended up using a simple layout with 1px dividers, as we did on all of our pages, as well as on the other visual concepts too, including the banners and the social media posts.
The beautiful thing on the About Page is all the good things people say about him in the testimonials. This truly reflects not only the quality of his work but the quality of the relationships he builds.
Cosmin decided that he wanted to write articles, a decision that I supported since the beginning of the project. The Blog Page great addition to extend the website to a platform of knowledge and expertise, as well as one of the best ways to optimize the website for search engines, aka SEO. Focusing more on content quality, Cosmin asked for a cover template that is easy to use and that he could edit himself. The correct approach was again to use 1px lines, his photo, and the link to his website just in case the photo gets lost in the voids of the internet.
The Contact Page is where I built a simple form with a picture of the artist in his natural habitat. I also added a banner with the contact information just in case there are visitors who would like to approach Cosmin via their own email or phone. Using a photo on the contact page adds to the character of the website and shows you that you are, in the end, working with a creative human and you don't just send bytes of data into the aether of the internet.
AudioSchool Visual Identity
For the AudioSchool, we started with the logo, kept the text style from Cosmin Mirza, and created patterns, graphic styles, and graphic compositions from the dots and typography, a diploma for his students, and a sticker design with a QR code. Later on, I got the opportunity to work on the book he wrote, where I designed two covers: one for the free version and one for the paid one, as well as the entire book layout and design.
Conclusions
I developed a visual language that, with time and consistency, will support Cosmin in going beyond being a well-known figure in the industry to achieving a high level of professionalism, expertise, and reliability as a partner. Being one of the first to take such a big leap will set the bar quite high and position him as a leader for years to come. It is written!
Cosmin is one of those clients who begins the brief with “I know what I want when I see it.” I know he is the dream client of every designer out there. I believe that our communication helped us both create a safe space where we could achieve results. By giving away his control and letting me be in charge, we were both able to focus on what matters: our craft. The fact that Cosmin trusted my intuition completely and let me make all the decisions regarding the designs left me in a position of great responsibility, and each decision I made was well thought out. I experimented a lot and wanted to involve him as much as possible by showing the steps and ideas I had so he could slowly make sense of the visual identity. We, the designers, trust the process blindly and know that things will make sense once everything is put together, and I think that involving the client in the process puts them in a position where they can see how the decisions are made. That’s how you gain trust and involve people in the process.
I believe, in the end, Cosmin was delighted to have one less responsibility and to be taken care of. I’m not saying it; he is saying it. Check out his testimonial down here.
Testimonial
I am the kind of client who doesn't really know what he wants, but I will know it when I see it, basically, it can be difficult to work with me. I trusted Cajva to take care of everything, from logo design to website design, without interfering, and I can say he didn't disappoint. Not only did Cajva deliver on the aesthetic front, but the functionality and user experience of the website have also exceeded my expectations; everything looks and feels professional. If you're seeking someone to enhance your visual identity in the business world while you focus on your work, Cajva is the ideal person for the task.
-Cosmin Mirza
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