Yarning 2025
Conference
Designer: Iris Pham
Deliverables: Logo, Business Card, Guideline Manual, Poster, Banners, Booklet, Lanyard and Merchandise
Instructor: Judy Armstrong
Overview
Project 1: Branding Logo and Guideline Manual
For this project, I was tasked to design a full brand identity for a fictional conference of our choice. It included a logo, a business card, and a brand guideline manual to ensure consistency between different materials. ​My conference is called Yarning. The main topics explore different yarn techniques, and how to turn yarn into sustainable hobbies. To highlight the conference theme, my logo is a yarn skein with three strokes in melon colour, creating the 'Y' letter. Yarning is also a slang for 'chatting' or 'a long story', so the yarn ball is also an abstracted speech bubble. The business card uses the primary brand colour, with the soft wave motif and yarn strands to tie back to the visual identity.
The second project goal is to develop more communications and promotional materials from the visual system created in Project 1. The deliverables consist of a folded poster, banners, lanyard, conference booklet, stickers, and textiles. To utilize and expand the visual identity, I incorporate more elements of yarn such as yarn textures, and handmade parts with more colours to depict the fun and friendly tone of this conference. For some applications like stickers and banners, I use more specialized illustrations and puns, which the conference attendees will understand and appreciate, to effectively promote the conference to the target audience.
Project 2: Conference Materials
Reflection
Project 1
Even though I had a clear vision of the conference topic going into this project, it was definitely difficult in the beginning since there had been a lot of yarn-themed conferences already. One of my goals was to create a visual identity that speaks to the topic but is also visually pleasing. In the end, I am satisfied with how my logo turned out because it captures the essence of my conference. It is simple but practical, and that allows me to adapt some variations of the logo for different applications in Project 2.
Project 2
My experience with this project is completely different compared to Project 1. Being a crocheter for 12 years, I had a lot of fun in the process of creating the conference materials, since I could use my crochet skills to make some of the deliverables by hand. At the same time, I encountered a few challenges in expanding the visual elements to go with each deliverable while maintaining a consistent brand system. The project also gave me an opportunity to look at the talented yarn artists and craftivists in the world, and acknowledge their hard work through my design.