Behind the Scenes of The Makers Keepsakes Brand
At Lianne Charlene Creative, one of our specialties is small business branding. We love working with clients who are passionate about what they do and small business owners are often the MOST passionate! Over the years, we’ve developed a process for working with these passionate clients in helping them visualize their brand. Our process has proven to work time and time again, but every now and then, we take a wrong step, forget about our process and expertise and let our clients’ passion dictate the process of the design. Designing the branding for The Makers Keepsakes collection was a learning experience in itself for both us and the client. Here’s a little behind-the-scenes look at the highs, lows, challenges, and successes of building their household brand.
About The Makers Keep
The Makers Keep is a community of small business owners and makers. With three locations across Edmonton & St. Albert, they’ve carved a niche for themselves in offering locally made stationary, apparel, jewelry, home goods, skincare, and fine art. Offered in a marketplace setting, their goal is also to build relationships with local vendors and encourage customers to support, shop and love local. We were hired by The Makers Keep to brand their new household collection The Makers Keepsakes; a collection of thoughtfully designed goods.
The Initial Conversation
When we were first approached by The Makers Keep, we were tasked with brainstorming a name for their household collection in addition to designing a new logo. The goal of the new brand was to maintain a certain level of consistency with the main company branding. We came up with a few different names that represented the essence of the collection and drafted up some concepts to go with each name. We presented a couple of concepts that matched the aesthetic of their parent brand but wanted to offer a few of our own ideas in the mix:
After the first round of concepts, we proceeded with a number of iterations using the name and concept that stood out most to the client; The Makers Keepsakes. We proceeded using similar fonts and colours to the parent brand in order to maintain brand consistency.
Round Two
After seeing the new logo in application across packaging, the client reached out again to explore other options that would differentiate the new collection from the primary brand. She wanted the branding to be as unique as the products they would be offering. She supplied inspiration which included a sun-burst in the logo - this was very on-trend at the time. However, at this point, it would have been our duty as her designer to question the reasoning behind the concept. In hindsight, we made the wrong decision to move forward with it; we decided to draft three variations based on her inspiration:
Once we refined and finalized the logo, we thought we had nailed it. Both the client and Lianne Charlene Creative launched the collection’s new brand. It was fresh, trendy, and represented a light-hearted feel to the new collection. It seemed like the perfect fit at the time until we received a message from another local business with similar branding. The other business sold apparel, had a similar typeface and colour palette, and also included a sun-burst in their logo. This was when we realized we had taken the wrong path. We didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes and also didn’t want to be confused with another local brand. After all, our goal as small business owners (both The Makers Keep and LCC) is to create a sense of community and kindness amongst us, not compete against them. After much discussion, we made the decision to rebrand the collection for the third time. THIS TIME, we recommended that we go through our standard branding process.
The LCC Way - Round Three
For our third and final attempt at rebranding The Makers Keepsakes, we decided to approach it the LCC way. We went through every step in our branding process in order to ensure the final product was not only unique, but also reflected the collection and businesses’ values. Our first step was to go back to the beginning. We had the client answer our brand discovery questionnaire which included information about their target market, competitors, future goals, company culture, history, and the meaning behind the collection. From their answers, we discovered that the essence of their household collection was in providing thoughtful gifts and memories to people. They also wanted to show how their household collection would bring together makers and designers by collaborating with them in creating limited edition products. The whole meaning behind The Makers Keepsakes is rooted in community and thoughtfulness. As a solution, we visualized their branding as two hands reaching out to one another, signifying community or the idea of gifting something special from one person to another. We put together a variety of concepts representing this idea:
After the first set of concepts, we narrowed them down to a basic idea of having “The Makers” at the top of the logo, the two hands shown within a circular shape, and the Keepsakes as the main focal point in a hand-lettered script font. From here, we swapped around different typefaces and refined the smaller details of the logo until we and the client were both satisfied.
The Final Result
Once we finalized the logo design, we needed to create a visual identity to go with it. We added different colour variations of the logo that could be used across marketing materials. We also kept the colour palette bright and cheerful and introduced a secondary range of colours to give the brand depth and to reach a wider audience. We then developed two brand patterns that would be used across their packaging and brand materials.
Take-Aways
Always always always follow your own process and advice. For a minute there, we forgot about our own process. We’ll be the first to admit that we were wrong in being reactive to the clients’ requests. Sometimes we just want to see the client happy and give them what they’re looking for. After all, we pride ourselves on being able to “collaborate” with our clients. But when we skip our own process, we undermine our own expertise. We always need to remember that WE are the experts in our field and that’s why they’ve hired us in the first place.
Always follow a strategy. Our process includes an initial brand discovery questionnaire that allows us to build a strategy surrounding your brand. Without that, we are just designing for aesthetics and no longer for function. Why design a logo based on a trend when you can design a logo that is timeless and based on a strategy? Once we had the answers to the questionnaire and REALLY understood the meaning behind the business, we were able to design an identity that meant something to not only the business owner but their customers.
Use obstacles as an opportunity to grow, rather than an opportunity to quit. In our industry, there are always going to be critics and opinions. What you do with that information is up to you. We chose to challenge ourselves and use this as an opportunity to create something better and more suited to the client. In the end, we branded The Makers Keepsakes the way they should have been branded and we and the client were more than satisfied with the final result.
“We don’t grow when things are easy, we grow when we face challenges.” - Branding The Makers Keepsakes didn’t come without its challenges but we will always look at it as a learning experience. Even as experts in our field, sometimes we need a gentle reminder to follow our own process and advice. Oftentimes, these challenges present themselves as opportunities for us to grow and become better designers and business owners.
- The LCC Team