Branding and a supporting website for Flat Earth believers
A branding study that focused on a luxury brand name. The real reason for this project was to educate flat earthers that world is in fact round. The fascade of creating a luxury hotel, placed on the edge of the world, would be to entice people to explore, learn, and laugh.
The brand began with concepting and to find what “problem” I wanted to solve. At the time, the flat earther movement was heavily gaining exposure and I wanted to combat that with this project.
Flat Earthers are people who believe that the world is in fact flat. After numerous and countless scientific articles published stating the exact opposite, that the Earth is round, they still believe in this idea.
Many Flat Earthers assume that the government is in control of this information and a conspiracy is generated to hide the truth. The truth being a large scale cover up of a hidden truth, ie. Alien Contact.
The Edge Brand was created to entice Flat Earthers to a possible dream destination, the edge of Earth.
This luxury brand will display a number of comforts and a few “explanations & exhibits” of common misconceptions of “Round Earthers.”
For example, we will market:
1. Why the Earth is flat but not the other planets.
2. Where the Oceans go when it falls off and how it is replenished.
3. If the world is flat, why don’t we all see the sunrise/sunset together.
We will present a number of exhibits for Flat Earthers to become educated on why the Earth is in fact round.
When viewing the exhibit, the Flat Earther will be presented with an exaggerated solution to a common idea behind the world being flat.
For example, where does the water go? The water falls off and gets replenished with the rain.
Clearly there is no way rain can replenish the water that is continually falling off the edge of the Earth.
We should be approaching this with as much respect to the users as possible. Not to embarress them with this ideas, but present that their beliefs are simply false.
Its difficult to present science to a person who firmly believes the opposite idea.
This has plagued religion and atheists for years. Going against human beliefs and presenting scientific differences is difficult to break into.
We are going to stage ambient advertising where pedestrians stand for a period of time.
The locations we have chosen are crosswalk waiting areas, airport walkways and elevators.
There brief and small areas will showcase the sights and location of the main hotel building; the very edge of Earth.
Crossing the edge means to accept the Earth is flat and to view the galaxy like never before.
These are the set of users we created to give us direction. This data was set from the research gathered at those that believe in the Flat Earth idea. Age, sec, location and other factors were given into these unique personas.
Living in the outskirts of Denver, Dartaneon is a seasoned medical professional that belives in conspiracy and folk lore.
He enjoys traveling, meeting new people and trying new things.
He enjoys the most luxurious things life has to offer and his look is very important to him.
He is ready for a vacation and wants to visit Edge as the next destination.
Chelsea was born in Wales and has traveled the majority of Europe.
She is passionate about writing and likes to try unique and rare adventures. She mainly writes about politics, but wants to broden her horizons.
She doesn’t believe in current media so she creates and observes her own world.
She is eager to travel and will try about anything.
Howard was born in China, in a rural part of Shenyang. He is a blogger with a vast followship.
He has a very narrow look to life and ideas and cares for his followers than his friends.
He travels to many locations in Asia, but never to another continent.
He is ready for his next trip so he can make others jealous.
Creating a luxury brand is something not to take lightly. Creating something that exhibits value and high-class needs to be fragile, thin and bright.
The look and feel of Edge and its exhibits will follow the guidelines portrayed in this guideline booklet.
Minimal
We display what is needed at the right moment and at the right time.
Confident
We know what we like and what our customers like.
Elevated
We aren’t an entity to take lightly; we are The Edge, the forefront of high-class living.
Determined
We strive to keep our customers happy and to ensure a bright, unique experience for everyone.
After finding the name of brand we would be exploring, the iterative process was about to start with the initial mark. The brand would lean on this and further the experience for the user.
Since the concept was going to be on the edge of the world, I explored this to make the base of the hotel between a negative and positive space.
Further pushing the concept to a less abstract approach. This clearly shows a point of interest at the edge of the world.
Going back to our values and personality, we went more of a minimal approach, but in the end, the negative space was too dominant in this approach.
We went with a minimal essence with our mark. This better portrays our ideology and direction with our location.
The hard edge in the middle defines the immediate difference of our planet and our space.
We stepped away from bold styling and filled areas and went with a more abstract approach with simplicity.
Measurements
Display our logo with adequate white space and always on top of our Rich Purple Hue.
This mark is to be always in Gold Fill and accents and never be distorted in anyway.
Please use our current resource library for the latest stencil and vector for proper sizing and color.
Improper use
Color Palette
The type was kept simple and one that was available to all systems. To keep it clean and modern, I chose a sans-serif that has a slight geometric style.
Roboto - Header
Roboto - Body
These are the visual and interactive advertising campaigns that will showcase what Edge is really about. They will highlight the main ideas of what Flat Earthers think and how far away they are from common science.
Pedestrians waiting for an elevator will be presented with high resolution imagery from our establishment.
Below them they will find Earth itself and when they cross over into the elevator, crossing the edge of solid ground and into the compartment, they will be further immersed into our galaxy shots.
When facing the door, they will see our front of house and our mark.
Elevator Exterior
Elevator Interior
Airports are common ground for moving-floors or flat escalators. We will use this space and turn it into an immersive, 3D experience.
We will encapsulate one walkway in an enclousure and display our galaxy shots that we took from the Back of House.
This will feature the Round8 Exhibit on why our planet is flat vs the others.
Normal walkway
Encompassed walkway
Deeper experience
This will represent the rotation the Sun takes around our globe to make the Sunrise different in different parts of the Earth.
This will show how small the Sun is in comparison to our Earth. We are displaying it as a small, life-scale of what the Sun size is.
Which is absurd.
Birds eye view
Finding the right experience to represent luxury and education. We will highlight the three amusements featured at the resort, where our Flat Earthers will get the proper education needed.
Of course, this is a faux resort and will never exist, but the advertisement will showcase that obsurdity of the Earth being flat.
Initial low fi wireframes
I took the layout I wanted to explore and started to do a eye movement study of where I want the users interest to be pointed. The content will follow this random and unique line as the layouts becomes more refined.
UI elements are added on top of the eye movement line throughout the whole layout. Once the UI elements are placed, I just removed the line.
I expanded the UI by adding a slight contract to the background and started some color tests from the palette.
After the iterative exploration, this is where the layout was headed. The visual design is based on space and on the concept of the project.
The initial design is strong with brand colors and kept to a minimum. I wanted to lean more of the visuals that I created instead of writing more body content. This is a luxury brand and minimalism is tied
with that.
We will be highlighting all of the exhibits that the faux hotel will hold and explain to the users how ridiculous a flat Earth technically is. Using sarcasm to tell a story of idiocy and humor.
In keeping with the hotel direction, we added a reservation processing form at the bottom and the room aesthetic that they would be offered.
All layouts
Edge was a visual design project that brought humor and information to those that may need it, in this case, Flat Earthers. I never really made a satire site or campaign and it was a great study to get my feet a bit wet.
I would do more logo mark iterations in the end. The very thing approach really speaks luxury but it is very difficult in a number of applications. Even though there are other brands that use thing stylized marks, I didn’t like this approach and wasn’t fully sold on it. If I were to change it, it would be more of a symmetric approach.
Edge provided a nice platform that meshed minimal luxury and sarcastic humor and i’m always a fan of humor. I would continue to evolve and push the design of this brand and supporting campaigns. I think there is a lot to gain with these visual studies in what works, what doesn’t and if the overall design works for the brand that it is supporting.