826 Tucson: Jardin Estrella
Brand Design
Web Design
Merchandise Design
Logo Design
Event Poster
Jardin Estrella is a branding project with elements of typography, logo design, web design, motion design, and merchandise design. The goal of this project was to learn the basic elements that go into building a brand. 826 is a national brand of literacy centers disguised as mythical stores themed around an obscure fact about the city it’s in, and are placed around the U.S. Click here to learn more about the brand. I used this as a starting point for the brand concept and built the brand for a new store in Tucson, Arizona (a place that doesn’t have an actual store). Through the process I created the name “Jardin Estrella” meaning “Star Garden” in Spanish. This is because Tucson is a “dark sky city”, a city that has laws to help decrease light pollution, making the night sky quite the beautiful sight there. The theme for the store was a star gardening supply store. You would be able to buy supplies to help “grow your star” as well as get the tutoring help you need. After careful consideration, I created a brand guide complete with a logo/word-mark, colors, and typography. To show how my brand would look in multiple settings, I designed a website, social media pages, merchandise, as well as specialty items that would be for sale there.
I also created an event that the store would host in partnership with the Tucson Botanical Gardens. The event would be a nighttime storybook trail that would encourage reading and other skills involved in education, while exposing kids to the wonders of the botanical gardens. To advertise this event, I created a two poster set that would be able to work together or separately. My inspiration for these posters came from my study of both of the brands involved, and my careful research into event poster design. Overall, this project was very helpful in my understanding of brand design and components, and taught me how to properly see brand design in multiple different settings.
PROCESS:
My process started with researching Tucson,AZ and the 826 national brand in partnership with my good friend Jeanne Lepley. From the information we gathered, I chose a topic to use as the theming of my brand. I then went into sketching. I wanted to nail down the wordmark/logo first so I would be able to use that to inform the rest of my design decisions. Then I began production on designing the merchandise that would be sold in the store. This took many iterations before I got everything perfect, but in the end I landed on designs that I am proud of. It’s good to be patient when designing. Sometimes the best outcomes take time.