Develop a Brand & Start Marketing Push
I once heard a designer describe a brand as “the promise you make to your customers.” I always liked that definition and I keep it in mind whenever I design, whether it is the Peace Corps Omnibus 107 T-shirt; Mujeres Cambia bags, tags, & brochures; or all of the marketing materials for the new Palmar Pizza.
What’s the new Palmar Pizza? Well, friends, as I explained in the last post, it didn’t exist a little over a week ago.
Naming the new business was pretty simple. Alliteration works and it is a phrase that makes sense in both English and Spanish.
I took the lead on brand design and brought several options to our counterpart and the staff of the pizzeria. Together, we chose the main logo and a secondary one and then I tweaked both with feedback (see above). The idea was to show half of a pizza pie on the horizon as if it were the sun and to play with the idea of a palm tree (for which Palmar is named) in silhouette. We are right on the beach and we can watch the sun set over the Pacific ocean each night so this seemed to fit our location and our laid back/beachy feel.
I like having the words separate from the horizon, too, so that it looks more three dimensional. We painted this logo on the wall outside of our storefront and it looks great.
Above you can see a few of the options I made and showed to our counterpart and the staff. I lef the decision totally up to them and I think they chose very wisely! As a designer, I have had to learn not to get too attached to any creative output since it very well might change or a client might not go with your top choice.
In this case we all agreed! I´m glad that it worked so well – the colors really work in the space and we have been able to extend the brand into the design of the store and in the marketing materials like the menu, delivery menu (we are the first restaurant in town to offer home delivery!), Grand Opening invitations, signage, pizza boxes, and fliers. Speaking of fliers, we recruited several of the teens from the youth group to hand out fliers and delivery menus in the town center. It worked like a charm!
The Grand Opening was this past Sunday and it could not have been more of a success! We worked long and hard and in the end we made 4x our goal (more than half of the loan we took out) for the day and hosted over 100 people at the event where we played games, gave away prizes, listened to the youth group´s rock band, and watched the Ecuador vs. Colombia soccer game.
Tune in tomorrow for Part III where I will share two recycled art projects that we did to spruce up the space and to attract customers!