So these are the photographs of my Burlesque Dancer brand identity printed and constructed. I don't think I really need to say anymore than that just yet.

Time to get cracking in Illustrator on this branding brief! The first thing I did was go to dafont and find a load of typefaces that to me represent burlesque or the time period and very high class looking type faces. To me, Burlesque is classy and more of a show than anything else, so I am definitely looking into the showgirl approach to this. The one I chose is called Budmo Jiggler (Of all the ridiculous names...) which reminds me greatly of the 'name in lights' thing of Hollywood and the stage.

A quick look into colours that I would connect to the idea of Burlesque. I imagine there to be very righ, high quality colours but at the same time I consider magenta and pale pinks to thrown into the mix because they are quite girly and magenta at least is quite a shocking colour.


Using my chosen typeface, I started to play around with layout options as well as colours. The typeface was just an outline, and in order to use just the circles of it, I had to build a second typeface on top of the existing one so that I would be able to use it how I wanted. I also started to play around with the pinks and purples that I had considered when looking at colours. I rather favour the dark pink colour as while a very feminine colour, it gives off a sense of high quality and high class. Expensive, but worth it, hah.


I decided fairly early on that I wanted the back of the business card to be a pattern, so I started looking into feathers. I just used some images from google images as obviously, this brief is fiction and while I am a student, I can get away with it. I am using quite a high res image of some peacock feathers, while not a Burlesque dancer's first choice, I am struggling to find a high enough res image of ostrich feathers to use. The peacock feathers are shown below. While I only experimented with landscape business cards before, now that I have my chosen typeface and colours, I looked into a portrait layout and found that I greatly preferred it to the landscape one.


Huzzah! I found a high res image of Ostrich feathers at last. While it's not the best, this is only a proposal and therefore it's not the be all and end all, and I can accept that this image is not high res enough. Using the same colour that I chose for the business card, I changed the full colour image into a monotone to keep the printing costs down and a feeling of consistency.


This is the other images that I am playing around with of the peacock feathers. It is much higher resolution than the image of the ostrich feathers and was also pulled from Google images. Out of the two, even though it is lower resolution, I prefer the ostrich feathers because they are more closely linked to Burlesque.


Not sure why this image has saved weird but there you go. These are my two options for the business card so far, and a layout that I'm currently happy with. The 'Burlesque' under the name doesn't sit quite right with me and so needs addressing. Each card has a different image on the back, and serves the purpose of choosing the ostrich feather image for certain.
Another part of the branding to consider is the envelope so this is my design sheet for envelope designs. I know that I want the same pattern from the back of the business cards to be on the inside of the envelope to spice it up a little bit. I like the idea of the envelope being quite corporate on the outside and then exciting on the inside.

Once I had the branding down, it was very simple to apply it across the rest of the media: letterhead, compliments slip, etc. Everything has the ostrich feather pattern  on the back, or in the case of the envelope, inside.

This is the three main parts of the branding identity put together in Illustrator to demonstrate the sizing of each of the components. Now all that's left is to print it and photograph it. As can be seen in the below image, the 'burlesque' below the name has been centre aligned and I'm much happier with it. I'm not sure what I was trying to achieve before but whatever it was, it wasn't working. All in all, the prints are one colour plus black plus stock. Pretty low printing costs, for something that looks quite expensive.

Being that I am currently sick of the projects that I'm working on, I've decided to take a short break from them and produce an identity in a day. A lot of people are doing briefs like this around me and I think it's a really good idea, practicing quick turn over and the like. I've had a couple of ideas for identities bouncing around in my head for a while. I wanted to go a little bit out there and do some ones for people with unusual jobs just for a bit of fun really. The original idea was to create an identity for a pole dancer, but then I figured that burlesque dancing is way classier and could be something created to a very high standard and look very expensive.

Being that I don't known any burlesque dancers, I decided to create one and found a very hand 'burlesque name generator' on the internet. Granted, some of the ones it came up with were really rubbish, but it spewed out some really classy sounding names. The one i went for was Vivienne Du Bois. It has a very high class sort of feel to it, which is what I imagine when I think of burlesque.


My mind map was a little bigger than expected when I started to think about all the things that I associate with burlesque. Certainly gave me an excuse to watch Moulin Rouge.


Just a couple of sketches for ideas of things to do with burlesque. The things that spring to mind for me are corset lacing and ostrich feathers, and of course, giant martini glasses. Dita Von Teese as well. At the moment, I am quite liking the idea of feathers. Fan dancing is one of the most prominent things that spring to mind when I think of burlesque, and I think it's a big part of it.


I did a few business card sized (roughly) rectangles and tried applying some images to the format. As of right now, I am rather liking the idea of the name in lights, or just initials, or feather patterns. I can't draw feathers but please, don't hold that against me. I had another idea that involved a pattern like a can can dancer's skirt and two holes for the fingers to push through and become the legs, but this is definitely more suited to a can can dancer or show girl rather than a burlesque dancer. Still though, I think it could be quite a nifty little idea.


I didn't really spend a lot of time on paper for this short brief as I figured I could get more development work done and get through ideas quicker if I jump onto Illustrator and start trying and testing things out.