Waymaker Visual Identity Design

Challenge Mr. Jon was about to take a leap of faith into starting his own one man consulting brand after over 20 years of experience in his industry, and one of the major challenges was standing out with a unique and modern visual identity while still reflecting his wealth of experience Mr Jon, A seasoned lean manufacturing consultant, through his brand waymaker lean consulting, is dedicated to helping manufacturing site leaders achieve challenging goals, especially those that feel overwhelming, thus the name Waymaker Lean Consulting Mission: Helping manufacturing site leaders achieve challenging goals. Vision: Empowering and encouraging leaders to be Way Makers in all aspects of life. The goal of this project was to craft a unique mark that will reflect overcoming obstacles, breakthroughs, and instil calmness in his target audience, Mr. Jon also wanted the logo to reflect lean manufacturing in some way also. For context, Lean manufacturing is a methodology aimed at reducing waste within production processes while enhancing overall efficiency. It defines waste as any activity or resource that does not add value from the customer's perspective and that they are unwilling to pay for. I started the project by hopping on a discovery meeting with Mr. Jon to better understand his vision for the project after he had filled out the questionnaire, creating a project board on Milanote where I organized my tasks and deadlines, they also sent me reminders about my deadlines, which was really helpful; I organized my research information, mood board and progress shots on the platform; and I added my client (Mr. Jon) so he could follow along in the project.

After my first round of research, I developed a buyer persona and even had some LinkedIn profiles of similar people on the Waymaker project board We had another meeting where we determined what Mr. Jon wanted visually, we looked at some carefully selected logos in his niche, and that gave me clarity on which direction to go. After that, I started sketching my ideas, I am aware that some designers argue that you have to do a ton of sketches, but that is not always the case, there are even designers that do not include that in their process, it is not a prerequisite, but for me, it is a way to articulate my ideas, I already knew what I was going for and the key word to focus on, so I proceeded to with ideating, sketching out concepts.

Now it is time to know if I executed his vision well. We hopped on a Zoom meeting where, I showed him the 2 concepts I had developed and also explained the thought process. He really liked the logos and, in fact, gave me one of the most heart-warming feedbacks , but there were a few details we could not discard, I took his feedback and went back to my sketchbook, going through the brief over and over again, and even if he proposed reviewing the previous concept, I decided to start afresh with new concepts, and this time even more exciting ones. In a way, it was cool that he noticed what was wrong with the previous logo, I always make my logo design process as collaborative as possible, carrying the client along. After wrapping up the new concepts, it was time to present them. We hopped on another meeting, and after presenting it, I saw the approval in his face, here are the designs