Case

Christine Madrid French approached us to create a personal brand strategy and brand identity design for her personal brand as an author and historian, specifically as several exciting publicity opportunities were quickly approaching. Her new book, The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock, was two months away from hitting shelves, and she was receiving a massive feature in the September 2022 issue of Vanity Fair. With significant publicity quickly approaching, Christine felt that her current brand was, well, non-existent, much less vague, confusing, and lacking her unique, vivid personality.

Strategy

We began by developing a personal brand strategy for Christine: one that drew from her personal background, her passion for storytelling, and her professional expertise.

Christine is a self-described “high-energy historian” who is at heart a storyteller. Throughout our brand strategy session, she repeatedly talked about taking her audience on immersive journeys, providing unique perspectives on their favorite films, and the familiar story-worlds she led them through in her book, her presentations, and more.

A critical component of Christine’s brand strategy was to keep her personality front and center, contextualizing it for her personal brand. While there are many other aspects of Christine’s unique personality that we considered showcasing in the brand—notably her love for all things spooky—we decided mutually that her brand’s focus is on classic film architecture and telling these stories in engaging, entertaining ways, and that her brand should be centralized around that vision.

Brand Visual Identity Design

Given Christine’s expertise in classic Hollywood architecture, we knew clearly that her brand design should reflect all things vintage cinema. We drew inspiration from the Golden Age of Hollywood—the 1940s and 1950s—and created a custom-lettered script logo design that evoked an early mid-century tone.

Christine specifically requested that “Latina red”, this vivid, blue-undertoned red shade, be a primary color of her brand as a tribute to her Latina heritage, and with the added bonus of connotations to red carpet premieres, we were fully on board with her idea!

Christine is best known by her unique last name Madrid French, so we placed primary emphasis on her last name in the main logo design. The custom script lettering, inspired by vintage script typography of the 1940s and 1950s, is a perfect blend of classic, elegant, and quirky.

We also developed secondary logo designs for Christine to use as a supplement to her primary logo, adding variety to the overall brand identity design.

The brand identity design is finished with this badge illustration design, featuring a custom-designed historic architecture feature, and of course including a moon and stars as a magic, mystical touch. The inclusion of CA / FL nods to Christine’s roots in Los Angeles (her family has lived in LA for generations, even helping to build the city in the early 20th century) and her current residence in Florida.