Family Table
Brand Design & Promotional Products/ 2021
Family Table was a branding assignment focused on answering a need caused by the pandemic. It is a fake organization dedicated to teaching families how to cook healthy and affordable meals. Since people were unable to meet in person, the aim was to bring Family Table to those at home. Mockups of promotional products were created for this assignment as if the items were the distributed through a delivery service. I created the branding identity, branding guidelines and mockups for this assignment.
process
Process
Research
The goal of this assignment was to create a brand with various promotional products. Before sketching or doing anything on the computer, a designer should research a topic and see how others address it. I chose cooking as it is a hobby I enjoy as well as an important life skill. However, not everyone enjoys cooking and some find it as a hassle to prepare a single meal. Companies such as Blue Apron and Hello Fresh provide a meal delivery service with preportioned ingredients that speeds up the cooking process. Teaching kitchens are organizations focused on building communities and teaching people cooking skills at a designated area. My idea was to create a brand that delivered basic cooking tools with simplified recipes.
Defining the Brand
To start any project, it is important to define the brand’s identity. Branding is the ideals and beliefs a company holds. The company logo is a symbol that represents these beliefs. In order to create an effective logo, the brand’s identity needs to be defined. What is the mission of the brand? What is the scope or project vision? What specific language or vocabulary is used by the brand?
At this stage of development. I knew I wanted the brand to be family oriented with a focus on healthy and affordable meals. I wrote down synonyms and other words that related to the brand’s identity. After this step, I created combinations of words for the company’s name. Out of the combinations, Family Table was the name that worked best for the project.
Brainstorm and Roughdrafts
After defining the brand identity and creating a company name, I went on to make a moodboard with fonts, color palettes, and various logo ideas. This part of the process is about throwing anything at a wall and seeing what sticks. A brainstorm where no idea is too dumb to try. In round 1, it is best to have others critique the various logos designs and narrow the options down to 3-5 logos.
Round 2 is about creating variations based on the chosen logo designs. Perhaps there are reoccurring design elements that can be explored more. This is also the time when the designs are critiqued and narrowed down to 1 logo. The final logo may go through edits throughout subsequent steps, however, the general logo is now defined.
Sketches
Logo Iterations
Final Logo
Finalization and Application
Creating branding guidelines is the next step of the process. These are the do’s and don’t for the brand. What are the color palettes? What fonts are used for what and when? How should the logo be displayed? What is not allowed? These are questions that should be answered and help keep a brand consistent. With Family Table, I chose a handwritten-like font for the logo and titles, and sans-serif font for the text. My color palette is warm-toned for a cozy feel. Like my logo mark, I made icons and patterns with geometric shapes. These designs culminate in Family Table’s branding.
Finally, these designs are implemented for different applications. The variation of logos was used based on the printing space for the promotional products. The recipe page was designed with two versions of standard and simplified instructions. A letterset was created for employee and company use.
