Marcy Carriker Smothers is the author of Eat Like Walt, Snacks: Isle by Isle; A Walt Disney and Disneyland historian; A TV and Radio personality; and a lifestyle influencer. I designed a new logo and brand guidelines for Marcy. I applied the new branding to a set of business cards, and a WordPress website.
After sifting my way through Marcy's books, website, and interviewing her I was able to start a few wordplay lists. These lists explored Marcy's industry, what exactly was her niche in those industries, and then a few descriptors to identify aspects of her future brand.
I surveyed a few figures within Marcy's industries to gain an understanding of how I might approach a professional personal brand. There were some take aways regarding color use and typography. I even noticed that some professionals seemed to correlate their outfits with their branding elements.
I searched a few different font banks for potential typeface candidates. This would be the basis of the logo design, so it was important to do a proper search and experimentation. Once I had a large collection I started sorting them into categories such as: Elegant/Refined, Personable/Charismatic, Energetic/Playful, and Periodic. I tried to stay in categories that corresponded with the wordplay descriptors to retain creative boundaries.
Once typefaces were narrowed down to a few I started playing with them to see where they could lead me. I worked with the typefaces in black and white experimenting with arrangements and trying variations on name. At a certain point in this development I moved into color exploration and continued to push the design.
The final logo utilizes both Marcy's online personality "Food Wine Marcy" and her full name. The typographic set includes a display font, geometric heading font, and sans-serif body copy. While the logo remains simple with just two colors—a full set of colors were carefully crafted incase designs needed to be expanded in other media formats.
With a final logo, type, and color I created an email signature and business card design for Marcy to use when communicating and promoting herself.
The website design was based off of Solopine's WordPress theme. I changed out the typography and color to follow the branding guidelines.
After the creative process was complete we arrived at a new collection of branding elements: bright warm colors and trendy typefaces—all which summed up Marcy's personality concisely.
I pulled together samples of typography, color, and imagery to compare the branding before and after the project:
