sticks & cricks

Branding and merchandise design

Role in project solo designer

Sticks & Cricks is an Etsy shop that caters to national park, and general outdoor lovers alike. The shop wanted to rebrand itself as it launched a new product line that featured stickers, shirts, hats, camp mugs etc.

purpose

With the shop being based on the platform “Etsy”, both the logo and products needed to cater to a wide audience of outdoor lovers, and appeal to multiple demographics. Etsy shop owners tend to fall into more of an “arts and crafts” category, so the shop’s branding needed to look like it belonged on the platform – yet stand out and look professional.

The same needed to be said for the products the store was offering – appeal to shoppers in the “arts and craft” realm, yet look more professional and higher quality than many of the other products on the selling platform. The brand was also considering selling their items wholesale to gift shops, so each product needed to cater to this demographic as well.

concept

I started with the branding, and chose a small color palette of rustic and earthy tones that would translate that the company focused on outdoor inspired products and gear. I selected a typeface that would translate a similar message, and got to work with designing a rustic illustrated element for the logo that would make it more eye catching.

Once the logo was in place, I moved onto any additional branding elements needed by the company. The main need was a thank you note insert for each shipped package, and my goal was to have the card be bold and beautiful to bring the branding experience with the customer through the whole unboxing. I left a large amount of white space for the team to hand write thank-you notes to their customers, and found a brown pen that matched their brand colors for this purpose. I included all website and contact information, as well as included a bright, bold design on the back of the card. The hope is that the card is beautiful enough to be saved as a small poster or wall art.

Finally, it was onto the product designs. The team selected a list of popular national parks, and I got to work with illustrating a family of stickers for each park. These stickers were designed to be water and sunlight proof, as to be as rugged as the parks themselves. The sticker designs were stretched onto camp mugs and long sleeve tees. In addition, I provided the brand with designs for a vintage hat, patches, and additional camp mugs.