Designing with purpose

At VIKA, we create brand designs inspired by your company’s image, history, and ambitions. Through research, conceptualization, and iterative design, we develop visual elements aligned with your brand strategy. Our process ensures cohesive and effective brand representation across all channels, resonating authentically with your target audience.

VIKA believe in a conceptually based identity design process that draws inspiration directly from your company’s image, history, and ambitions. Here’s how we work with our clients to create a brand design that truly captures the essence of your brand:

Research and discovery
We begin by conducting thorough research into your company’s history, values, mission, and goals. We analyze your existing assets, including logos, colors, typography, and imagery, to understand your current visual identity and identify areas for improvement or evolution.

Brand strategy development
Building on our research into your company and its ambitions, VIKA work to define or refine your current strategy. We seek to clarify your business narrative, looking at unique selling points (USPs), target audiences, brand personality, and market positioning, so we can establish a clear foundation from which to start the identity design process.

CARGO (Charting African Resilience Generating Opportunities), Lawrence Hoo. Design by VIKA. — Initial directional designs. CARGO (Charting African Resilience Generating Opportunities), Dr. Lawrence Hoo

Conceptualization and Ideation
Drawing on these insights, we will start creating concept designs that reflect our findings and align with your company’s image, history, and ambitions. We will explore a range of different concepts, themes, and motifs that we believe encapsulate your brand’s identity and evoke the desired emotions and perceptions from your audience.

Identity landscapes and sketches
We will build a design landscape of built from our research. and apply this to rough sketches to visualize design concepts as well as systems for presenting the design, e.g. potential formats, interventions, events and merchandise. This phase is bespoke to each client but is likely include inspiration images, color palettes, typography samples, and other visual references that help convey the proposed design direction. These will be presented to you for consideration and feedback.

Iterative design
Initial design concepts are reduced, and iterations are based our resposnes to your feedback. Over these rounds, we will refine and evolve our visuals to better reflect your company’s image. This may involve multiple rounds of revisions and adjustments, with application to a range of materials, processes and situations until the final design direction is approved.

Visual identity development
Once the design direction is understood, we begin developing the visual elements of your brand identity, including the logo, color palette, typography, imagery, and graphic elements. We ensure that these elements are cohesive, consistent, and aligned with your brand strategy and positioning.

Design and production of high-quality book, exhibition and graphic design for artists, photographers and photojournalists.

Award winning graphic designer Victoria Forrest has been designing printed and digital publications for a wide variety of highly prestigious clients for over a decade. Since her MA in Communications at the Royal College of Art, Victoria has created designs for world-renowned British artists (Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor and Sarah Lucas); master photographers (Paul Graham, Elliott Erwitt and the Oscar-nominated Tim Hetherington); publishing houses (Chronicle, Thames & Hudson, teNeues, Steidl); museums and galleries (Gagosian Gallery, Hayward Gallery, The Photographers’ Gallery and the Royal Academy), as well as designs for Magnum, Getty Images and HRH The Prince of Wales.

As permanent resident of the Pervasive Media Studio, Victoria researches the transition of print to multi-media, through which she has published articles in The Bookseller and the British Journal of Photography. Her own publications (VIKA Books) have made the Christmas Top 40 Bestsellers on Amazon and been featured by BBC News, while her ‘groundbreaking’ interactive designs have been nominated for FutureBook, Media Innovation and D&AD Awards. In 2015, to open up the digital self-publishing market to grassroots organisations, Victoria founded Apps4Arts.com. — Bethlem Gallery logo and colour spectrum

Application and implementation
Once the graphic identity is nearing completion, we test drive your newly developed brand identity across various pre-agreed touchpoints and communication channels, including stationery, marketing collateral, packaging, signage, digital platforms.

We are looking for a combination of flexibility and power. So we consider factors such as scalability, adaptability, and usability to ensure that the identity design is effective and versatile in different contexts. It may be necessary to conduct another few rounds of iterative design, or refinement at this stage.

Brand guidelines creation
Once we have a new identity assigned to your first round of products, we document the brand identity guidelines, outlining the usage rules and specifications for the visual elements. These guidelines will serve you as a reference tool for internal and external stakeholders, ensuring consistent and cohesive brand representation across all channels and applications.

Throughout the entire process, collaboration, communication, and alignment between our graphic designers and your company stakeholders are essential to achieving a successful identity design that authentically reflects your company’s image, history, and ambitions while effectively resonating with your target audience.

For more information on how VIKA can help you with your brand, you can book in a free Half-hour Consultation by emailing hello@vikabooks.com

‘We really value the relationship we have with Victoria. Her work has been instrumental in helping us develop from a small biennial, to a fully formed arts organisation with an international reputation.’
Sue Jones, Whitstable Biennale
‘VIKA is a highly skilled, knowledgeable and flexible professional. Her minimal and classy design style has hugely improved our public perception. We are often complimented on our promotional materials. As well as our brand, VIKA designed, managed and negotiated the installation of signage between the gallery, museum and NHS Trust extremely well. VIKA has a vast network of high-quality, international contacts built up over many years. She always delivers excellent work on time and in budget.’

Beth Elliott, director, Bethlem Gallery
‘Whether designing high-quality art books or a new corporate identity, Victoria often exceeds expectations. Her cheerful approach and can-do attitude light up any room she enters and make the process of working with her all the more enjoyable.’

Andrew Brown, Art/Books
‘It looks amazing! We’re delighted!’

Clarence House