Oh Gee Pie – Mascot research and sketch

Mascot research and sketching
For a very long time brands have become accustomed using a mascot character to represent the company besides the logo. Often at times companies license other characters from businesses to use in their product promotion. The brand mascot can range from many things besides characters; it can be a symbol, a colour, a particular shape or even sound. McDonald’s brand mascot ‘Ronald’ is a well known face and is recognized immediately; another good example could be ‘Quicky’ from the brand Nestle, the character is a ‘cool’ rabbit who runs around fast whilst drinking hot chocolate. The brand has also said that the mascot was named ‘Quicky’ after the product’s easy/quick process of making a hot chocolate. At this point I already had a mascot character in mind but  wasn’t entirely sure but after doing the research of existing brand mascots and the purpose they serve I’ve come up with quick sketches of a concept for the character I want to represent my brand.

Oh Gee Pie – Tagline/Slogan

Tagline/Slogan Mark making
At first I established my tagline/slogan to be ‘You know you knead it’; This was play on the words to make the customer laugh whilst they read it out to themselves but also tells the customer what type of method for baking was used to make the products. ‘Kneading’ is the process of where the baker rubs, folds, moulds and wrings the dough texture to make pies and other baked goods by hand. I thought this also worked well as ‘Hand made’ being one of the supporting themes of my brand; this process reflects the care that is taken to craft these amazing tasting pies. Another idea I had for my slogan was, ‘Love your/Every slice’ which is self-explanatory really, but the mood I’m trying to emulate with this slogan is that the customer will love every bite/ slice of pie from us. As usual to start the process of getting a better understanding of my direction I began to mark quick drawings of potential ideas.

Oh Gee Pie – Logo sketching

Oh Gee Pie – Logo sketching

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

For my logo what I had in mind to have it look like a comic cartoon title, so it would be bold, have thick letter outlines and the colouring/texturing would directly reference in the same manner of comic book design. When I started sketching out ideas I like to find my direction by making random selection of drawings/lettering that’ll help me to think of the next idea. During the process I thought of my earlier idea of having a symbol or mascot to represent the brand; this is when I started to expand on the drawings by adding logo + character design marks. Once I had a handful of reasonable quick thumbnail designs I reflected on the ones which I thought were the most successful and scanned them in. Once they are scanned I’ll be able to outline them and edit them according to my brands personality.

Oh Gee Pie – Affinity Brand/Packaging

Affinity Brand/Packaging

Besides the affinity heroes/artists I chosen to get some sort of influence/inspiration from. I think the second research I did into this proved more beneficial. Not necessarily a bakery brand, Johnny Cupcakes is an apparel brand that themes it’s company around the design motif of ‘cupcakes’. The brand was started by Johnny Earle, who used to work in a  comics store; each day he would be nicknamed by his colleagues as ‘Johnny Appleseed, Johnny Pancakes, Johnny Cupcakes, Johnny Coffeecakes, etc.’ it didn’t stop so one day after running a few prints on t shirts for the band he played in, he put his nickname on the design and wore it to work. His colleagues immediately noticed the cupcake theme behind t shirts and asked numerous times on how to purchase them; Johnny then sensed the demand for his designs and began selling them out of the trunk of his car, and now it being a multi million dollar company!

Examples of product packaging 

Johnny Cupcakes packaging for his products all depended on the theme they were particularly ruining. For example their standard purchases for inshore would include a small carrier box with the Johnny Cupcakes logo on it. But if it was a special theme such as Halloween, detailed illustration graphics would reflect this in its design or form of packaging. Johnny believed that packaging was just as important as the product itself because he wanted the customer’s to ‘feel’ the experience from the second they received/purchased a product. Johnny has reflected on this experience the same way he wants people to feel like ‘It’s christmas all over again’. With this in mind I’ll be sure to keep a solid theme running through my packaging and look for ways to be innovative/creative.

Oh Gee Pie – Mood board Exploration

Oh Gee Pie – Mood board Exploration
In order to get a better understanding of the branding direction I want to take for this brand. I put together a few images on the concept/mood board that would help me to pinpoint themes/words to evoke the feeling/aesthetic around my branding idea.

This was my first attempt at putting together a mood board, though I was pleased with how they all looked put together; I still felt like it did not entirely capture the direct theme I was thinking about for this brand. I changed my initial idea and decided to go for a concept that projected the brand from a vintage comical influence to influence the mood and feeling of nostalgia, making people want to revisit good memories. I was happier with the second attempt because I really feel like I brought the theme together well along with its imagery.

 

Oh Gee Pie – Logo design – Research

Current logo Observation/Research

For my logo research, I started to look at current illustrative logos of other companies that are in the ‘bakery’ sector. From observation I noticed how a lot of the branded logos had emblems and symbols representing pie; Personally I wanted to stay away from that repetitive notion, but I still wanted people to get a sense of my branded goods straight away as soon as they looked at my logo; so keeping hold of that influence I then started to look towards logo’s that were just script but effective in communicating what they’re about.

Font exploration – Part 2

From my last session of the font exploration I noticed how some of the fonts worked and how some of them didn’t; I though of ways how I could incorporate the feeling of ‘pie’ into the lettering so I tried this by attempting to create ‘crumb-like’ edges with a black paint brush around the lettering. Though I lied the idea and how it could’ve worked if done by hand, I started to notice rather than looking like ‘crumbs’ the edges of he lettering looked ‘smoky’ which of course wasn’t my intention. It was going to be hard to get the sharp ‘rocky’ edges crumbs have so instead of doing it by hand I decided it’s best to have the font separate and find textures/create textures of ‘crumbs’ to play with

Further explorations

• Research / Develop ‘crumb-like’ textures /
• Research further into ‘bold’/’Solid’ fonts

 

Font exploration workshop

This workshop was conducted by Sara and she tasked us to find fonts that would help the messaging of our brand’s voice; using my selected brand’s palette colour I tried out various fonts in terms of ‘readability’ / ‘applicability’ on packaging and possible promotional outcomes.

Further exploration:

• Research further into other fonts and choose one/ Keep consistent to brand’s voice/message.

Brand framework – ‘The Manifesto’

Brand framework – Determining the manifesto 

Definition of manifesto:

• ” A written statement declaring publicly the intentions, motives, or views of its issuer.”

 

For this session we had the clients come in and speak to us in groups so we could have a better understanding of what they are trying to communicate. Using a pre-templated table consisting ‘Vision, Mission, Profile’, I listened on and made a quick draft by merging their words together along with the words they had chosen from the brand value exercise.

 

 

 

Oh Gee Pie – Brand colour trends

 

Task 5 – “Brand colour analysis” 

Using the ‘Dieline’ and the ‘Packaging of the world’ websites I carried on my research of identifying key colours and for which reason they related to the allocated brand. By doing this exercise I believe it’ll give me a sense of what colours are reoccurring and the trends within the category of ‘Bakery’/’Baking’.

 

What I noticed amongst the selected brands in the table is that they all used no more than three colours in their palette and the use of ‘subtle/soft’, ‘candy-like’ colours shown up to be a popular trend. To find out why this was, I researched into the theory of colours and found out that certain colours attained a ‘feeling-response’ as shown in the table below:

From the reference wheel I chose my favourite colours, along with the ‘Feeling’/’Mood’ they are meant to articulate.

Red –  ‘PASSION’ / ‘LOVE’ / ‘STRONG’

Yellow – ‘JOY’ / ‘CHEERFULNESS’ / ‘ENERGY’

Orange – ‘WARM’ / ‘HAPPINESS’ / ‘CREATIVE’

I chose the colour orange because I feel like it’s a strong/bold colour and the meanings it portrayed were similar to my brand’s values/theme.

 

Further explorations

• Develop & Tryout colour in brand messaging/packagaing