Sherwood Forest Design

While a number of options were drawn up and considered, when I presented the concentric circles representing the bowls, their circumferences finished by the brand name and tagline, we knew instantly this was the one. With the logo solidified, addressing the typography and color that would be used to create the other pieces was a natural solve.

These ideas and values were at the forefront of our goal to create a logomark that embodied both the concepts and the bowls themselves.

Each bowl and server set sent to a customer contained the recipe + care + story cards nested within the packaged bowl. The look and feel of the cards needed to impart the same comforting friendliness as the words within. Printed on a pale textured card stock, I chose Italia, a warm, legible typeface with softly angled serifs and open counterspaces, and paired it with Montserrat, an clean, geometric sans serif for larger sections of text and ingredient lists.

The updated color palette was derived from some of the accent colors already in use on the bowls themselves, as well as the light, mossy green pigment, hand-dipped along the bottom edge of each recipe card.

Just as you would dress for an interview or prep your resume for your dream job, your brand must put its best foot forward to resonate with your audience and grow your loyal following.

It’s now more widely understood that a brand is more than just a logo; it’s a whole personality made from color, patterns, textures, and messaging. It’s how you speak to your audience; it’s the experience of what you have to offer.

For Sherwood Forest Design, the palette was pulled from the predominant colors in the painted bowls, complimented with hues that evoke natural wood and fabric materials. The color range was intentionally kept narrow—4 colors including a buff white—primarily to mimic the organic simplicity in nature’s green forests, but also with an understanding that as a small studio, additional costs and waste associated with using multiple inks would not be sustainable. For typography, the pairing of Italia and Gentona combine warmly styled serif headlines with a craftsmanlike body text. Iconography is simple and hand drawn outlines to maintain a sense of light, open space.

Once the main elements of SFD’s brand toolkit were in place, additional pieces were created to support marketing and product packaging. Among the pieces I created were an email template to give the brand’s mailing list a more sophisticated, cohesive look, consultation on leveraging the new brand elements for a Shopify site to bring the once word-of-mouth business more exposure and customer sales, and merchandise hang tags and stickers communicating the Sherwood Forest Design commitment to sustainability.