Discover Korea Campaign Rebrand Book (Student Project)

Our Master’s “thesis” at Full Sail University was to create a Project Campaign book for the major rebrand we performed on a company of our choosing throughout the course of the year. I chose Korean tourism for a number of reasons:

  1. I felt that Korea had a lot to offer and was getting a bad rap in the US thanks to the antics of the Northern dictators (whenever I said, “I live in Korea” people back home would ask, “*gasp*, North Korea?”)
  2. I felt that Korea was wildly misunderstood in the US (LG was thought to be a US company and Samsung and Hyundai were thought to be Japanese by a majority of college students in a number of surveys I read)
  3. I felt that Korea was largely misrepresented by the brand campaign when I arrived in 2006 (“Korea, Sparkling” – what did that mean? Sparkling water?)
  4. And the brand campaign of 2010 was no better (“Korea, Inspiring!” looked like a combination of their previous brand + Incredible India’s tourism brand)
Discover Korea: pages 6-7
Discover Korea: pages 6-7

Clearly, Korean tourism branding needed some serious work – at least from a Western perspective and for a Western audience. So, I set about to rebrand Korean tourism with those things in mind.

Discover Korea: pages 28-29
Discover Korea: pages 28-29

My entire Research, Concept, and Design process – including Logo description, Style Guide, and Design Deliverables are laid out in great detail in my book which is available in two formats:

  1. Hard-bound for purchase on Blurb.com
  2. eBook on Gumroad.com

The Blurb book was mostly just a way for me to have a beautiful hard copy of my 1-year rebrand project. I’ve enjoyed leafing through its 122 pages and showing it off to my friends.

I was also recently pleased to hear (from my former instructors) that my Project Book is still being used as an example for students to follow in the program now.

Book Sample

Read more about the Logo design process here →
Discover Korea: pages 34-35
Discover Korea: pages 34-35
Read more about the Moodboard and Toolbox designs here →
Discover Korea: pages 52-53
Discover Korea: pages 52-53
See the complete Style Guide here →
Discover Korea: pages 70-71
Discover Korea: pages 70-71
See all the Campaign Deliverables here →
Discover Korea: pages 104-105
Discover Korea: pages 104-105

Creating the Project Book

Sketches

I made these very small thumbnailed bookmaps because I wanted to be able to view the book “as a whole.”

Using Guides

Screen shot 2011-01-18 at 12.50.32 PM discover-korea-guides-sample-spread1 discover-korea-guides-sample-spread3 discover-korea-guides-sample-spread2

Section Dividers

Rejected Designs

The following designs are a handful of those created that were ultimately eliminated from the Project Book but helped me to work out the design style I wanted to go with.

discover-korea-failed-section-divider2 discover-korea-failed-section-divider3 discover-korea-failed-sectiondivider1

Official Final Design Samples

Discover Korea: pages 10-11
Discover Korea: pages 10-11
Discover Korea: pages 30-31
Discover Korea: pages 30-31

Book Covers

Rejected Cover Designs

The book cover was one of the most important and the most difficult designs I did for this project. My professor had me work up 3-5 different designs EACH week for 3 weeks before finally settling on the final design that was submitted and printed.

Final Cover Design

discover-korea-front-cover-withflaps
Front cover
discover-korea-back-cover-withflaps
Back cover
The inside flaps didn't work well on this design.
The inside flaps didn’t work well on this design.
Inside flaps redesigned.
Inside flaps redesigned.

Again, the complete Project Book is available in two formats if you want to read the whole thing:

  1. Hard-bound for purchase on Blurb.com
  2. eBook on Gumroad.com

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