Project 4: The Nutty Cow

Featured Project

The Nutty Cow

This design was created for a hypothetical small local business. This business specializes in the production and sale of ice creams made from nut milk rather than diary. The business is focused on having a fun, inviting environment that serves not just people with dairy intolerances or dietary restrictions but makes a product that is high quality for everyone to enjoy with a lower environmental impact than dairy based ice creams.

Logo

Creating a Character

With the focus of the logo being on fun I was excited to make a character that would represent the namesake of The Nutty Cow. Creating a cow out of ice cream was an idea that came relatively quickly but in practice it to some time to iron out a way to elegantly create a cows outline and also maintain and ice cream shape while keeping the design relatively simple. Nuts were worked into the cows design to create the ears and horns in order to represent that unique trait of the product. The mismatched orientation of the cows eyes was done in order to represent the concept of “nutty” or a little bit kooky keeping the tone of the brand light hearted. I then added a spoon in order to ensure that people not only saw a cow when looking at the character but also a bowl of ice cream. The ice cream itself is a slant and a bit of center adding to the overall whimsical sense of the design.

Colors

Saturated and Diverse

Due to the use case of this logo for a restaurant that will have assorted decor related to the logo and focus on lighthearted fun I did not limit myself on color selection as much as I usually do in my designs. I instead when with a theme of saturated colors and utilized three completely different hues in the logo and branding. I was careful to avoid making these colors to bright so that they can be used as font on lighter backgrounds and in broader areas in the environment of the restaurant without becoming over whelming. This also helps the colors to stand out among the lighter tans that I used in the logo as colors for the nuts. This pair of shaded diverse hues and tans perfectly matched the product and branding representing fun and nuts respectively.

Fonts

Fun and “Nutty” Lettering

I utilized two different font in The Nutty Cow logo, Coquette and Impact. Coquette is a more playful script font while Impact is a simple sans serif with thick lines. The focus of the title “Nutty” is a modified version of the Coquette font. I changed the baseline of each character in the word nutty in order to represent the overall tone of the word within it lettering itself. Because of the nature of the modifications to “Nutty” the simple Impact font paired well for use in the other words “The” and “Cow” remaining very visible while keeping attention on “Nutty” and allowing it to stay center stage.

Branding

Complex but Very Adaptable

My biggest worry with a logo this complex is that it will not be viable in as many use cases as a simpler logo. However, I thought that using a more complex character logo was the best choice in this case so instead I ensured that this logo could be adapted to different versions that are still recognizable as the same product. The lettering and character can both be used independently of each other when necessary. The lettering can also be abbreviated or put into different orientations and still be recognizable. This ensure that logo is viable for use in different cases that require more narrow spaces or a smaller mark.