Creating an identity for Nude Soap

IMAGES VIA NUDE INSPIRATION PINTEREST BOARD HERE

I was approached by the lovely Yorkshire lass Jo to design some packaging for her fabulous artisan soaps. So I just thought I would document the branding process to show how I finally came up with the design.

First of all I created a pinterest board with Jo, I LOVE pinterest for creating mood boards, emails and phone calls are fine but visual mood boards get you on the right track! If I pin Jo could like it or comment or pin something she liked. There was a lot of different styles from Art Nouveau, Art Deco to Indian inspired patterns but certain things became apparent to Jo and that was her love for geometric, symmetry and black and white. So first for inspiration I always turn to my huge hard backed The Grammar of Ornament by Owen Jones as its full of glorious plates showing the origins of patterns. I wouldn't bother with the small paper backed version but you can see the original plates here on the Digital Library for Decorative Arts.

Fired up by began to doodle away but wasn't happy with anything until I searched through an old Art Nouveau pattern book and spotted a couple of unobtrusive triangles. They, to me, looked like a scientific equations but in pattern form, representing all the natural ingredients like plant extracts, oils etc that go into the making of soap. Taking the doodles I began to form the pattern, below are the initial concepts and scruffy doodles as I began to work with Jo on how we would take this to the next level and create her brand.

Stay tuned for the final reveal!