TheFreemanPhilosophy Needs a Classy, Elegant, Intellectual Logo

The Freeman Philosophy

Grow Every Day

This is a platform dedicated to helping young men reach their full potential by encouraging them to STUDY HARD and WORK HARD on themselves, their relationships, and their ideas. The core belief behind the brand is that the best way make a difference is through continuous, strategic self-education and discipline.

This platform publishes content related to:
- Physical Fitness
- Mental Health
- Critical Thinking
- Learning
- Inner Game
- Lifestyle Engineering
- Investing
- Personal Finance
- Emotional Intelligence
- General Psychology
- Philosophy
- Dating
- Romance
- Sexuality
- Intimacy
- Marketing
- Leadership
- Parenting
- Dog Training
- Teaching
- Entrepreneurship
- Sociology
- Culture
- Religion
- History
- Futurology

Our target audience is young men in the 15-30yo range who spend time on YouTube. Specifically, we're trying to connect with individuals driven by a need to improve themselves.

Completely up to you. I like the idea of off-white, but this isn't a requirement.

We're going for a hybrid of contemporary and classic. If there's one word to describe the brand, it's "timeless". Nothing too modern or attached to trends; something that could stick around for years and decades to come.

BACKGROUND:
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This idea is heavily influenced by "The Playboy Philosophy" - a collection of ideas advocating PROGRESSIVE social, moral, sexual, and political policy created in the 1960s and targeted at bachelors.

It's also influenced by this definition of "GENTLEMAN":

"The True Gentleman is the man whose conduct proceeds from good will and an acute sense of propriety, and whose self-control is equal to all emergencies; who does not make the poor man conscious of his poverty, the obscure man of his obscurity, or any man of his inferiority or deformity; who is himself humbled if necessity compels him to humble another; who does not flatter wealth, cringe before power, or boast of his own possessions or achievements; who speaks with frankness but always with sincerity and sympathy; whose deed follows his word; who thinks of the rights and feelings of others, rather than his own; and who appears well in any company, a man with whom honor is sacred and virtue safe." - John Walter Wayland

And obviously, "Freeman": "one enjoying civil or political liberty"

LOGO:
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The logo should be simple, elegant, powerful, and recognizable. We want something potent and iconic - not too complicated or noisy. It should be refined, composed, classy. Unique and packing a punch related to education and achievement - perhaps somehow incorporating a book or some other powerful symbol of freedom/intellect.

It should be either a graphic or a graphic + text. This is what we'll use as our YouTube/Twitter/Facebook/etc avatars, so it should blend well into the header image and would ideally work well as an app icon as well.

CONTENT BEHIND THE BRAND:
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Keep in mind that the primary platform is YouTube - and I'll be on-camera in many of the videos explaining concepts. In other videos I'll be using whiteboard animations to illustrate as I speak.

Videos will be shot in a studio with white walls, black furniture, and colored LED lighting with books up on the wall: https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon…L1000_.jpg - I'm sharing this in case it gives you any design inspirations. These shelves have "uplights" under them, giving the following effect:

https://i.imgur.com/edAtfqX.jpg

You do NOT need to incorporate these ideas into the design; I'm sharing these details for contextual purposes only.

BRAND:
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The overall vibe of the brand is: CLEAN, tidy, sexy, INTELLECTUAL, classy, disciplined, wealthy, adventurous, compassionate, healthy, creative, romantic, confident, old-school, futuristic, cultured, technological.

HEADER IMAGE:
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Some ideas that I have:

1) A collection of characters along the bottom of the image, each one demonstrating one of these "brand qualities". For example - romantic might be a man holding a rose or bouquet. Healthy might be a guy and girl working out. Sexy might be a girl looking a little seductive. Etc.

2) A visual representation of "progress" - one bookshelf, then two bookshelves vertically aligned, then three bookshelves vertically aligned, leading to a guy who is working on his computer as you move to the right - demonstrating progressive self-education and unrelenting discipline.

3) A visual representation of "evolution". There are five stages to becoming a freeman: boy > playboy > man > gentleman > freeman. We may be able to somehow incorporate this idea of "evolution" into the header image:
https://i.imgur.com/aRCF09T.jpg (not this exactly, just conceptually)

Please don't feel like you have to incorporate all (or any) of these elements into your design; I'm sharing this with you in case it inspires a design concept that aligns with other aspects of the brand.

RE FUTURE WORK:
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We will likely be interested in hiring the winning designer to create YouTube Thumbnails for our videos as well - so the style should be compatible with some kind of vision for YouTube thumbnails.