brand development

Whilst developing my designs for my homewares I also thought that I need to start thinking about my branding for it. How will the target audience be able to purchase my product?

Below I tried a very simple esign which is made up of three 'homes', each in a different colour to represent the 3 different products I have in the range; fabrics, ceramics and wallpapers. The overall feel of the piece is wrong and does not sell the correct values I want to portray.
Next I started to develop different logos that could work without wording. I decided to first try a simple house shape which I have rotated, edited the opacity and played with scale. I think the is something interesting in repeating the shape, however I think it looks like a sword or a cross at the moment. Therefore I want to experiment with adding more repeats...
Here are the results of doubling the 'crosses'. I am really drawn to the flower shaped one on the left hand side and think this could be an interesting concept. Maybe the cross one will work better in colour - give some contrast and stop looking so solid.

I also tried developing the houses into a capital H. I think the simpleness of this design could work but think it doesn't fit with my designs and concept very well.
Here are the crosses in colour I suggested I should try. I do not think this works very well and I believe the one with more rotations is stronger.
More colour development of the cross.
Here are some experiments with colour on the 'flower' design. I have come up with a final concept for the logo....LOGO = a flower (rural) made from houses (urban). Therefore I have tried using a rural and urban colour palette for the flower, and I think the is something interesting going on with the lime green and grey.
Here are some developments of this logo with the word home. Experimenting with the best way to link both the word and symbol. During my designing I had a mini crit with three of my design friends and we decided the house shape was lost in the design. As a result you can see that some of the designs have one (the top one) house shape standing out more. I believe this helps link it back to homeware products more obviously. Also one of my friends suggested I lighten the greys as it is not very neutral and has too much impact and dullness!

Here are the developments of me making the colour palette lighter and playing with location and colour.
I have decided to use a subtle flower shape and use it as the 'o'. However, I still like the idea of having 3 different colours for each range I have (tried in the top design). Below you can see my colour experiments to try and determine which 3 colours could work together.
Blue: Too bright and punchy.
Red: To serious and dangerous!
Yellow: Too pale, does not stand out enough.
Purple: Too dark.
Pink: Too girlie?
Baby Blue: Simple and calm.
Lime: Fresh.
Orange: Modern.


Below are the final three colours...
I am unsure which colour is for which however I think they work well together as a collective. One question though...what do I do for the main branding? Where range doesn't come into it.

Answers posed in the next post...