Session 8: Final Project — Mini Brand Package

A mini brand package has a fixed shape, and fixing it is what makes it deliverable in the time available. It contains: a logo in three variants — full colour, single colour, reversed; a brand kit document covering palette with hex codes, typefaces with weights, tone of voice and usage rules; two print pieces — a business card and an A5 flyer, both with 3mm bleed; and three social pieces — two feed posts and one story, all from the same system. Nine deliverables, one system, one client.

Scope it against a real brief, not an imagined one. Choose a business you can actually ask questions of — a shop, a salon, a church, a school, a food seller — because a real brief produces real constraints and real constraints produce better work than invented ones. Send the six-question brief from session seven and use the written answers. If no real client is available, invent one with the same rigour: a name, a product, a location, a customer, a price point and a goal. The discipline matters more than the client.

Then plan the order. Brief first, then the goal in one line, then palette and typeface together, then the logo, then the kit document, then the print pieces, then the social set. Working in that order prevents the common disaster of designing a flyer before the palette exists and having to rebuild it later.

The system is the palette with named roles, the two typefaces with specific weights, the type scale, the logo and its clear space, and the image treatment — the brightness, contrast and saturation adjustment you will apply to every photograph. Write it down before making a single piece. Every subsequent decision then becomes an application rather than an invention, which is both faster and more consistent.

Build the reusable components at this stage too: a call-to-action button, a social handle bar, a section header with a divider, a photo frame with a caption. Group each in Canva and keep them in one file. Across nine deliverables these components will be used dozens of times, and building them once is the difference between finishing on time and finishing late.

Set up your print templates simultaneously: A5 at 154×216mm and a business card at 91×61mm, each with 3mm bleed, trim guides and 5mm safe-area guides marked. Having these ready means no piece is ever built at the wrong dimensions, which is the mistake that costs an entire print run.

Work through them in dependency order. The logo comes first because everything else uses it; test it at 32 pixels before moving on, and produce the single-colour and reversed variants while you are in the file. The brand kit document comes second — a two- or three-page PDF holding the logo variants, the palette with hex codes, the typefaces with sample text, the tone, and a page of correct and incorrect usage examples. Building it here rather than at the end means it documents decisions while they are fresh.

Then the print pieces. The business card holds name, role, one contact route and logo — nothing more — on 300gsm stock. The A5 flyer follows the five-element structure from session five: headline, primary detail, image, call to action, identity, with the background extended into the bleed and all text 5mm inside trim. Export both as PDF Print with crop marks and bleed, and check the pixel dimensions before moving on.

Finally the social set. Design the first feed post completely at 1080×1350, establishing the layout, colour proportions and image treatment; then duplicate the page for the second and change only the content. Adapt to 1080×1920 for the story, keeping text in the middle third so the platform interface does not cover it. Export as PNG at full resolution, send one to yourself through WhatsApp to check compression, and adjust if the type does not survive.

The package is worth more as a presented case study than as nine loose files, and the presentation is quick to assemble. Structure it in five parts: the brief — who the business is and what the work was for, in three lines; the goal — the one thing the viewer should do, in one line; the system — palette, typefaces, logo, with a sentence on why each was chosen; the work — all nine pieces shown clearly, with the print pieces shown in context; and the result — what the client said or, if the work is unsolicited, what you would expect it to achieve.

Presenting the reasoning is what makes it persuasive. Anyone can produce nine images; showing that the palette temperature was chosen because the business sells food, that the wordmark was chosen because it survives at profile-picture size, and that the flyer carries five elements because it has three seconds — that demonstrates judgement, which is what a client actually hires. Keep each rationale to one sentence. Long explanations read as insecurity; short ones read as command.

This case study becomes your portfolio. Publish it as a PDF you can attach to any enquiry, and post selected pieces to your own social accounts with the reasoning in the caption. In this market, a designer who can show one complete, reasoned brand package is immediately distinguishable from the large number who can show only isolated pretty images.

The honest position after four weeks: you can produce professional design work for the market that makes up most paid design in Nigeria — brand basics, flyers, social content and print. What you cannot yet do is complex vector illustration, motion graphics, packaging dielines or interface design, and pretending otherwise to a client is how reputations are lost. Say what you do well and refer what you do not; that is professional, and it protects the work you did do.

The natural next steps branch. Business & Freelancing is the most valuable immediate follow-on, because the constraint for most new designers is not skill but clients and pricing. Web Design extends your visual thinking into an interface medium where the same hierarchy and type skills transfer directly and the fees are higher. Content Creation pairs naturally with design, because a designer who can also shoot and edit becomes a one-person content service — which is what most small businesses actually want to hire.

Whichever you choose, the compounding asset is the portfolio. Every real job adds a case study, and case studies are what allow you to raise prices. Designers in this market rarely fail from lack of ability; they fail from invisible work. Publish consistently, keep the sources, and let the accumulation do what advertising cannot.