Building a Brand continued: The horrors of doing exactly what the client wants.

Warning the below 3 samples are a result of doing exactly what the client wants, but also slowly, methodically putting them on the proper path for building a respectable brand.

The below sell sheet was the very first job I did for the client having seen what they used to do in their ads and listening to the client. His direction for the “Mardi-Gras Bear” was “make it look like Mardi-Gras! stock photo of Mardi-Gras in the background, cake in the front, fun colors you know…”. I knew exactly what he wanted upon hearing these instructions. I also knew I would hate it. So I did exactly what he wanted:

Holy loud right? Well the client loved it. I also presented the below too just to show him why its better to go minimal on the background.
Now, I could live with that last one, but nothing I was proud of by any means. The client put it to a vote amongst his employees, they all LOVED the last one. He started to second guess what he initially wanted…then asked me “which do you like?” I flat out told him “none, we have yet to do this brand identity as I see it for your whole line.” After negotiating a creative price I went back and worked on what I had in mind. As I previously mentioned in earlier blogs I felt instead of being so literal in the background why not make logos for each cake that represent the cake. So rather then a photo of Mardi-Gras in the background, show Mardi-Gras in the logo and keep the back simple but help support the product. First thing you want to see is the product, then you want the memorable logo, and the background should be just that…background.
This is what we finally decided on.

Kuddable Kakes Tagline and logo: Continuing to Build the Brand.

This will be a short Sunday entry. The client had been using their tagline in their marketing up until this point: “A Kake & Keepsake for all Occasions”. A catchy line indeed, and certainly goes with their product. However, they would always just type it into a sub-headline and various fonts with no consistency. As I was building their brand with the early designs for their first few lines of collectible cakes (see previous blogs), I thought we should be turning this tagline into an identifiable logo to be added to their marketing when needed. Here is the logo.

Wild at Heart Valentine Pillow Collectible cake

Today’s entry was the design and brand management for the “wild at heart” Kuddable Kakes line. After a few ideas were presented here is the final with 2 alternates. Some photo re-touching was done on their provided photography. Normally I like to handle the photography myself from the beginning. Just was not going to happen with this client as they had their entire line photographed before meeting me. The challenge with a client like this is in their minds ‘bells and whistles’ in design means they are getting their money’s worth. We had many talks about this, long term branding usually leans to a more minimal side. Before I started doing their marketing they would just type out the name of the cake in Helvetica and set the cake in a party environment with too many “bells and whistles” in the background. I sold them on the idea of each of their cakes needing its on brand and logo that could eventually be used in other products like packaging, tee shirt etc. My main argument was the cake in the design has to be the first thing you see, then the identifiable name (logo) and the background should just emphasize both without distracting the consumer away from the product.

FINAL:
Alternate without pattern of hearts in the background and drop shadow on “heart”. This is while the client didn’t know whether to actually use “heart” in the title of the product. I talked them into not being so literal.

Design alternate in Pink

More to come…