The Pastry Shop

A Mobile, Alabama insti­tu­tion known far and wide for amaz­ing baked goods, the shop was in need of a new street sign and new look. The shop had never taken a delib­er­ate approach to iden­ti­ty or brand­ing and want­ed to see a wide range of ideas before nar­row­ing in on a solu­tion. This left the design brief wide open for the first round of ideas. Everything — typog­ra­phy, color, iconog­ra­phy — was up for grabs.

The Old

With a huge range of options pre­sent­ed for the first round, we were able to dis­cuss ideas bet­ter and start nar­row­ing in on key­words. A refined, but play­ful qual­i­ty emerged to describe the iden­ti­ty. More tra­di­tion­al, than mod­ern. Less hip­ster cup­cake bou­tique but still fun, invit­ing, and spe­cial. The logo also start­ed to solid­i­fy around the idea of a cake. Below are a few of the early con­cepts that helped make dis­cus­sion of the iden­ti­ty easier.

The New

A cake is a pret­ty obvi­ous solu­tion for a bak­ery, so the chal­lenge was ele­vat­ing it to some­thing more unique. I solved this chal­lenge in two ways. By using uneven weight in the out­lines of the lay­ers, I broke up the struc­ture of three boxes stacked on top of each other. The sec­ond way is the cake’s inter­ac­tion with the typog­ra­phy. The stag­gered align­ment mir­rors the cake, but the dif­fer­ent size of “Pastry” con­trasts with the cake’s struc­ture while bal­anc­ing the struc­ture of the logo as a whole.

Color

Another way I decid­ed to add char­ac­ter and inter­est to the obvi­ous cake-based logo was in it’s color treat­ment. Instead of set­tling on one color com­bi­na­tion, I’ve left open the pos­si­bil­i­ty to use mul­ti­ple color vari­a­tions for the cake. Similar to the wide vari­ety of cakes they sell, The Pastry Shop logo can shift per­son­al­i­ty to com­ple­ment a par­tic­u­lar mes­sage or use. Mmmm, choco­late cake!

The Wrap Up

Overall, this was one of those dream projects since the ini­tial explo­ration was wide open for any pos­si­bil­i­ties. While I ini­tial­ly avoid­ed the cake as an obvi­ous solu­tion, I slow­ly worked my way back to a unique treat­ment and com­bi­na­tion that works for The Pastry Shop’s logo. I can’t wait to keep build­ing on the iden­ti­ty and try out some fun appli­ca­tions of the logo elements.