Branding: Finch Flower Co.

Flowers have certainly been a big theme for many of our branding endeavors this year – but there was one floral-themed project in particular that we couldn’t wait to get started on. Nina got in touch back in the spring with an idea that made us just giddy: an antique flower truck! She had just secured the keys for a 1957 Ford F100, and was ready to launch her dream business, Finch Flower Co, here in Western Massachusetts.

The image of locally-grown bouquets adorning the bed of this cream-colored vintage pick-up was nothing short of inspiring, and we wanted to complement that iconic look with branding that told the full story of a unique business.

Starting with the logo, it was all romance and floral wildness centered around a signature finch.

We built off that ethereal look and feel to both tell the story of the truck – affectionately called “Birdie”! – and create a memorable aesthetic. Secondary logos, custom illustrations, brand marks, monograms, call-outs, and a fun pattern all came together to do the job.

All of these elements were designed with application top-of-mind, as customer experience was at the center of the business. We wanted every interaction with the flower truck to be special and memorable, and looked to achieve that in the details of the bouquet packaging and truck adornments.

A custom A-frame chalk board and subtle, elegant truck signage made for a versatile and flawless presentation at events.

Gilded business cards really elevated the whole look and feel - there’s nothing like seeing your logo set in gold foil!!!

Custom floral tissue was a place where we really maximized the floral illustrations into a repeat brand pattern - and then subdued it just a bit by pairing it with a more neutral brown kraft paper.

It was fun to sprinkle our little finch throughout this brand!

The silk floral ribbon may be our most favorite element of this project - elegantly tying it all together, quite literally. Paired with a tag (which doubles as a mini business card!) each bouquet really delivers the full brand experience in a tasteful way.

We couldn’t have been more pleased with the way this brand came together. It has been so much fun to see Nina and Birdie out on the road this summer, at events and gatherings all over the Pioneer Valley. Follow her travels over on instagram and learn more about booking the truck for events on the Finch Flower Co. website - designed and developed by our trusted partner, Emily King at Wheel Horse Digital!

Thank you Nina for this incredible vision - it was a thrill to help bring it to life and we are so glad to have this gem of a small business in our community!

Award-Winning: Apis Apotheca Packaging & Diemand Farm Logo

We received some phenomenal news this week! Our packaging design work for Apis Apotheca and our logo design work for Diemand Farm have been recognized as award-winning by the Ad Club of Western Massachusetts, as part of their 2021 Creative Awards. This event recognized work completed during the Worst Year Ever, 2020.

We are proud to report that we took home a gold medal for the Apis Apotheca packaging in the category of Series of Packages!

Photos by Cara Totaman Photography. Styling by Good Look’n.

The work I’ve done for Apis Apotheca has been so near to my heart. My lovely friend Aviva gave me all sorts of creative freedom when designing the bottles, jars, and product boxes for her skincare line, and it was a particular privilege to design for products that I genuinely love - I use Golden Milk and Resin every. single. day. The final designs were the result of a truly fun collaboration, and I COULD NOT WAIT to submit these to the annual creative awards. Sure enough, they brought home the gold. So proud of this one!

And, we received a silver medal for the Diemand Farm logo in the category of Logo Design!

Diemand Farm is another branding project that just bursts with love. The Diemand family was so open to my ideas throughout our collaboration, and they have trusted me unconditionally with their farm’s image. That’s no small thing - they’ve been in operation since 1936 - and it means the world to me. The logo design really set the tone for the whole branding project, and I’m particularly proud of the subtle “diamond” symbolism of the illustration. It’s been so much fun to expand on this brand over the last year, and this logo will always be one of my favorites.

I’m so glad to be a part of the Ad Club of Western Massachusetts, and completely honored to have been included in this impressive showcase of local talent. Thank you most of all to my wonderful clients Apis Apotheca and Diemand Farm, who granted me the creative freedom to bring these visions to life. Here’s to more great work ahead!

Branding: Thomas Farm & Dairy

One of my favorite things about spring is the abundance of cute baby animals. Baby chickens, baby horses, baby cows, baby sheep – that is – chicks, foals, calves, lambs. I’m a bit partial to baby goats though – kids. There’s something about their playfulness and awkwardness that just melts my heart. I fell in love with a Nubian goat kid aptly named JoyJoy last spring at Thomas Farm & Dairy, and that love grew into one of my most favorite branding projects to date.

 Thomas Farm & Dairy is well established in Western Massachusetts for their delectable goat cheese. If you’ve ordered a salad with goat cheese on top from a local restaurant, I’ll bet it came from Thomas Farm & Dairy. Their chèvre is award-winning, and the secret to their success is actually pretty simple, albeit much hard work: they put a lot of love into it.

When I visited Thomas Farm & Dairy and met owners Laurie and Jim, I was welcomed so warmly, and was instantly struck by the level of care they put into all they do. Laurie walked into the goat barn, and hundreds of goats suddenly had eyes only for her, climbing over one another to get a cuddle in. She called each one by name and told me their unique stories and quirks. It was clear – she loved these goats and they loved her.

And I loved JoyJoy! Client meetings are always fun, but I have to say this one was really fun.  

 In building a brand for this farm, I wanted to capture all the love, care, and joy that I witnessed in just that one visit. Goats are a big deal at Thomas Farm & Dairy, but it’s also a very diverse farm – they’re raising and milking Jersey and Swiss Brown Cows, growing vegetables and cut flowers, running a roadside farm stand, and more. This was a big story to tell, and we started with the logo:

We kept the goats the focus for the primary logo – two ladies grooming one another. We thought it really conveyed that feeling of love that goes into everything on this farm and captured the sweet personalities of Nubians in particular.

 That was expanded into a set of secondary logos and custom brand illustrations that work together to tell the full story of this farm. I like how we brought in a little retro dairy farm flair that still feels modern and exciting.

Taglines were fun to develop for this farm too, using typography to once again describe those values of love, joy, and care.

Thomas Farm’s farm stand was also a huge focus of this project, as it has become an important and reliable resource for local food during the pandemic. Laurie and Jim keep all of their cheeses, seasonal vegetables, and cut flower bouquets in stock throughout the year, as well as a terrific spread of other favorite local goods. We gave The Farm Stand its own logo and really made it shine.

All of this branding was incorporated into a new website, that makes it easy to find Thomas Farm & Dairy cheeses, learn about the farm, and get a behind the scenes look at everything going on there.

The final piece was a label update, which really brought the branding together in a practical and beautiful way that ought to really stand out on the shelf. We developed labels for all varieties of goat cheese, and for the farm’s famous squeaky cheese curds.

I love how the little colored ribbons differentiate the cheeses. So many delicious flavors!

To come full circle, this project was truly a labor of love. Laurie and Jim were so enthusiastic throughout the process, and deeply care about the ways they share their farm with the community. Most recently, they are really inspiring me with these barn quilts they’ve been painting and hanging around the farm. So genuinely on-brand. Wow!

Thank you Thomas Farm & Dairy for all your collaboration on this project, and thank you to CISA for helping make it possible! We accomplished this project in partnership with CISA, who does such a fabulous job of connecting local farmers with resources to help them succeed. Local farms - reach out to CISA to see how we can work together to help you tell your story with some new branding! (and don’t forget I offer a 15% discount to Local Heroes!)

Branding: Rooted Flowers

There are some farms in Western Massachusetts that are just establishments, and I am always humbled when those establishments trust me with their brand. It’s an overwhelming honor - really. When Becky of Rooted Flowers got in touch about refreshing her brand, I got that feeling.

Photo courtesy of Rooted Flowers

Becky has been farming all her life, coming from a long line of hard working farmers here in the Pioneer Valley. Cut flowers are her focus, growing all her beautiful blooms from seed and designing stunning arrangements. Becky and her family recently moved from Hadley to Agawam, onto a plot of land all their own, and Becky has totally transformed the acreage from dormant farmland to rows upon rows of flowers in just a little over a year’s time. I’ve had a first-hand glimpse of just some of the work going on over at Rooted - and let me tell you - it’s nothing short of amazing. Check out her daily Instagram stories to see what I mean.

With the new land and a new chapter beginning for Rooted Flowers, it was time for a brand update as well. Becky really wanted to offer the heart of her farm’s story: passing agriculture down through the generations. Becky learned farming from her grandparents, and shares all she does on the farm with her two young daughters, Mary and Julia (Becky was pregnant with Julia for the duration of our project, and ran a successful farm and business during a pandemic - really, it’s AMAZING).

The primary logo is centered around that concept. We have a big “mama” flower and two smaller flowers looking up at her, representing Becky’s two daughters. The logo carries all the elegance and professionalism we needed to appeal to bridal clients, but carries some really significant meaning at the same time.

We rounded out the branding with lots of marks and details that told the story of all that goes on at Rooted, which focuses on three main themes: Grow, Build, and Create. Each theme got its own illustration, and really shows all that goes into every plot, harvest, and bouquet on this farm.

We applied the branding to floral tissue paper, kraft tags, and boxes that were all sourced sustainably and are recyclable and compostable, putting Becky’s mission into clear practice.

Of course designing for a beautiful flower farm is as much fun as it sounds like it might be, but furthermore, I learned so much from Becky in the process. Witnessing her energy, enthusiasm, grit, perseverance, work ethic, and genuine love for the land and her family totally inspired me, and made for some work I’m really excited about and proud of. Rooted is truly an establishment in our Western Mass farming community. Thanks Becky!

We accomplished this project in partnership with CISA, who does such a fabulous job of connecting local farmers with resources to help them succeed. Local farms - reach out to CISA to see how we can work together to help you tell your story with some new branding! (and don’t forget I offer a 15% discount to Local Heroes!)

Packaging: Apis Apotheca

One of my favorite things about this job is that oftentimes clients are friends and friends are clients. I’ve made lots of new friends thanks to happy client relations and sometimes clients and I go way back! 

Way back in college I had easily the coolest freshman year roommate a girl could ever be randomly assigned. Actually, I had never met anyone that cool before and sometimes I needed a minute to catch up. Aviva was from New York City and she had a knack for finding chic vintage cardigans and leather bags in thrift stores. She’d been to France. She listened to music I’d never heard before, by Bon Iver and Dr. Dog and Beirut and Grizzly Bear. She had a Netflix subscription; DVDs you picked out on the computer then arrived in the mail!! She played the guitar and the banjo and the violin and could even sing opera but mostly just crooned ethereal melodies she had written in-between classes, and when she brought them to Thursday night Open Mic, boys cried. She made oatmeal each morning and we spent a year talking about everything. She wasn’t just cool, she was kind, and just the sort of friend I needed to navigate a new thing like college.

She transferred away to another school sophomore year, and we fell in and out of touch over the years. Our paths serendipitously crossed again two years ago as we both found our greater callings: she was farming and making skin care and I was farming and making logos.

Aviva founded Apis Apotheca, a farm-to-face brand run by farmers, herbalists, and educators who feel a duty to uphold traditions of equitable access to safe herbal medicine and knowledge. She brings together extensive knowledge in organic farming and herbal remedies to create products that are healing for the body, the community, and the environment. Aviva may be a friend, but I can genuinely say these are the best skin care products I’ve ever used. Golden Milk + Resin is my religion, and my skin is so much better for it. I really wouldn’t use anything else. 

I was psyched when she started talking about a rebrand; it was time to elevate things with shiny new packaging. We put together what could be my most favorite moodboard of all time, featuring an eclectic mix of Italian runway fashion, Russian grandmas, ‘70s flower children, and cute little vintage jam jars. It was all over the place and made perfect sense. 

One word kept coming up: juicy. When I went to design this brand, all I kept thinking was “it needs to be juicier.”

So I created a very folksy botanical pattern customized to each product. Lush green foliage is adorned with herbal symbols representing each formula: chamomile, calendula, gotu kola, wild rose, frankincense, and dragon’s blood. 

Applied to the boxes, we had definitely hit “juicy” level. And complemented with jewel tones and gold foil details, there was a whole new luxury and intrigue introduced to the brand. 

The screen-printed amber bottles and jars balance the maximalism of the boxes nicely with a single terra cotta color, softly carrying the botanical vignettes and general juice through the whole line

The result here is a brand that now embodies everything Aviva has been pouring into this brand: organic, sustainable ingredients, thoughtful, equitable herbal medicine, eco-conscious packaging, the sweat and love she’s put into her bursting gardens, a solar powered lab, and a certain - I don’t know - coolness that is just her.

I am so excited for this launch. What an opportunity when you get to design for a good friend, and a brand you truly believe in. Thanks Aviva!