Spark!
For this project, the students in my class were broken up into groups, and we had to come up with a business. We had to write down a brief history of the company and give some details about what their product is all about. Then, we were given a different group's company. We each had to develop the brand based on the information that we were given. Once finished with the assignment, we would each present back to the original creators of the company. The creators would then decide whos branding they would use.
I was assigned Spark!, a caffeinated gum. Spark! was meant to be marketed towards ages ranging from teens to young adults, specifically students. I drew some inspirations from the modern sleek aesthetic of 5 gum. To mirror this I decided to go with a darker color scheme. I also wanted to make the brand stick out from other gum brands. A lot of colors that I found in gum packaging were light blues, greens, and pinks. To offset this, I chose navy and a burnt orange. When I started brainstorming for the logo, I toyed around with the idea of having the exclamation point mimic a fuse from dynamite with the tittle tying in as a spark. Once I had my logo finalized, I moved on to creating the business card, stationary, and envelope.
One of the aspects of the logo that I knew I wanted to carry over onto different branded pieces was the fuse and spark. For the back of the business card, I mirrored them vertically, on the stationary, I stacked two of them and then mirrored them horizontally, and on the flap of the envelope, I again mirrored them horizontally. I really love how the fuse appears on all elements of the branding in some form unifying each piece to the others.
After I finished the printed pieces, I took on creating the packaging. I chose to create two different flavors: spearmint and strawberry. Spearmint is a staple for gum, however, I am not a big fan of mint flavors when it comes to gum, so I wanted to include a fruity flavor as well.
For this design, I borrowed from the back of the business card and from the bottom of the stationary. I chose to color the box navy and drop the parallelogram around the logo to increase white space, and reduce the busyness of the design.
Finally, the last aspect of the assignment was to create a billboard and a couple of advertisements to accompany it. This was my first time creating an ad and then having to push and pull it to fit all of the specified dimensions. I struggled to find a way to make them all work and still look unified.
Instead of using the navy for the background, like I had been continually doing through out this project, I opted to use an orange gradation. This makes the navy from the box pop more and the burnt orange is more eye catching. There is also research behind the color red increasing one's desire to eat, which ties in nicely with the product. I used photoshop to remove the coffee from the mug and instead put some boxes of gum inside to reinforce the message that there is caffeine in the product. I also wanted to make the word 'Spark!' from within the coffee mug part of the text, so it can read as 'Spark! your energy' and 'your energy.' both ways make sense to a viewer, but it was a fun way to tie the image to the text. This unfortunately was not an option for the half page ad. To maintain visual balance, the mug had to be in the center. To achieve the play on text that I did in the other ads, I would have to have put the mug at the top of the ad. This just not an option, so I made the logo all white and decided to put that at the top instead. Even though they are not all the same, there is still a clear sense of unity between the pieces.
At this point, I uploaded everything I had created into a presentation, and I prepared to present my work back to the original creators. I felt prepared, but I was nervous to be handing over my work that I spent countless hours perfecting. The panel included the three other students who had created the company, along with my professor. I confidently presented the brand elements that I had created, and left the meeting feeling as though it had been well received.
After all of the presentations, my professor uploaded a list letting us know who's branding project had been chosen by each panel. There were three other students in my class who had also been assigned to Spark!, and I had seen all of their logos, however, I didn't get to see anything beyond that as to keep the pieces from the creators for a grand reveal. I was incredibly excited to find out that the creators had chosen my branding project.
