Logo and stamp design

One thing I've really enjoyed about trying to launch this business, is the fact I get to do all the marketing and design. I find marketing, when it's designed only to inflate something weak, to be very off putting. However there are good products and services, that need to communicate what they do, and in those instances, marketing and branding is fascinating and I really enjoy it.

The focus of Hveiti og Smjör is going back to basics, both in recipes and ingredients, as well as the interaction between baker and customer. The recipes are tantamount. I am choosing only heavy, sweet, moist baked goods, hence the name, Hveiti og Smjör (in Icelandic, it means "Flour and Butter"). I wanted something descriptive, but simple. There is no hiding that these will be calorie dense treats. They are designed to replace the numerous empty snacks in the week, and provide a once a week treat of a much higher quality.

They are hand made, by the proprietor. These are not from mixes, or from an industrial kitchen that services ten or more bakeries. It is the only source of these delicious snacks, and the logo and branding needed to reflect this. I am using heavy brown paper as the packaging, tied with hemp twine. I want to invoke the days when you went to a town store and interacted with the owner. Everything should point to this simpler time. This made me think of using a stamp, rather than a label or sticker. First, it produces less trash, applying directly to the already needed packaging (which is itself recyclable, being paper), and second, it's much more old fashioned, again pointing to a simpler time.

I started with finding around ten fonts with open usage rights that I liked the look of. I found a brown paper texture for my background in photoshop, and applied a layer style to get them to look like they had been impressed on the paper. I checked each of the ten fonts in the right layout to see which one spoke to me with the right feel. The font I ended up with is called Harbara, and I love it. Next I sketched the simple flour sack, having a few real photos, as well as cutesy animator drawings. I tried it also with a rolling pin, and with an unwrapped stick of butter, but preferred the simplicity of the open sack by itself. I quickly shaded it and used the halftone filter to create the dots so it would reproduce in a single color and still have volume. I feel like logos work better that have some graphic element rather than just text.

Having made a mockup I was happy with, I found a local Icelandic stamp manufacturer, emailed off a high-res tiff file, and 3 days later got this beautiful stamp. It makes the logo at 10x6cm (around 4x2.5 inches).

Here I have flipped the image in photoshop so it can be read, but the real version is reversed so it's imprint will read correctly. The dot pattern reproduces very well.

An actual imprint from the stamp.

I also wanted to play around with a teaser image, but I've decided I want to do an actual advertising campaign using this format of bodies mixed with baked goods and a witty saying.

Now the website is almost finished. I'm working on finding a credit card processing solution, and Ágúst (my husband) is working on the database management system and mass mailer.