Complete Brand Identity Design: Catered by Patti Caces

Posted on April 24, 2015 by vgrunewald

COMPANY ANALYSIS:

Catered by Patti Caces is an established professional catering company in Central Florida that has thrived on its solid reputation. Although there is not a significant digital presence, the company maintains a successful business with both wedding and corporate clients. Their mission is simple: to take care of their clients. They do so by serving high-quality (and delicious) cuisine while providing high-quality service. Based on their reviews, I’m not surprised they’ve been successful with little digital marketing — word travels fast when you have happy clients. Establishing the brand online, however, will certainly help the company reach and engage a much larger audience of potential clients.

The company’s current goal is to further expand their list of corporate clients in the film industry by providing on-set catering and craft services during local productions. With this in mind, the target audience of their new brand identity campaign should be these corporate clients, while still being inclusive of their wedding clients. In order to reach this diverse group of clients, I recommend the company follow best integrated marketing communication (IMC) practices. IMC is the development and execution of a cohesive multi-channel identity campaign that immerses the target consumer in a consistent experience every time they encounter the brand. We want every consumer who encounters the name “Patti Caces” to immediately associate the name with professional catering, quality customer service and delicious products.

Currently, the company appears to go by a few different names online, including 1st Choice Production Catering, Catered by Patti Caces, and simply, Patti Caces. Fragmentation in the company name might create confusion among consumers. According to a Bloomberg Business article, fragmentation is the number one enemy of successful brand marketing. The solution? IMC. Catered by Patti Caces needs to promote a cohesive identity across all of their marketing channels, including consistent use of company name, messaging, visuals and voice, in order to build a solid, recognizable brand.

MY STRATEGY:

To relaunch the Patti Caces brand with a wide online presence, I’ve designed an IMC campaign that will help establish a modern visualization of the brand. I designed the company’s brand identity with the name “Catered by Patti Caces” in order to take advantage of the company’s existing name recognition while keeping their services obvious to new potential clients. The overall feel of the brand design is bright and crisp, appearing well-established yet energetic and fresh. I kept the designs flexible, focusing more on the company’s dedication to product and service than the types of clients they serve. The campaign successfully draws attention to the Catered by Patti Caces name while highlighting their on-set catering business, a service that might not be immediately known to their other established clients and so needs further promotion.

DESIGNS:

Logo:

The logo should encapsulate the brand’s essence while still being simple and flexible enough to appear in a variety of print and digital forms. I designed the logo in two parts: a symbol and a text portion. The logo could be used as a whole or split depending on need, and can also be arranged vertically (as it appears here) or horizontally. The color palette is bright, fresh and appropriate. The symbol is telling, yet simple. Each circle represents a tier of the Catered by Patti Caces business: professional service, baking and cakes, and quality cuisine. The circles link, representing the business being built on all three of these values. The text portion of the logo features a modern font pairing that places emphasis on the Patti Caces name. I created the tagline, “Motivated by quality, inspired by you, since 1988,” to again highlight the values while emphasizing the well-established nature of the business. To remain flexible, the tagline need only accompany the logo when appropriate. The logo provided is currently set to a digital-appropriate resolution (72 dpi), however a higher resolution image appropriate for print could be easily provided at the company’s request.

Full color logo for Catered by Patti Caces

Grayscale logo

Reverse/dark background logo

Banner Ads:

The banner ads I created utilize the logo and continue its color palette and typography in order to remain visually consistent. These banners are for use on the Catered by Patti Caces website and could also be used to advertise on other appropriate websites. The specific promotion focuses on both the quality nature of the company’s products while highlighting the on-set catering service. The ads are simple, featuring large, enticing images and bold type. The call to action here is to learn more about the film catering arm of the business that many clients or potential clients might not think of when they think of “Patti Caces.”

Leaderboard banner

Enhanced leaderboard banner

Cube banner

Button banner

Animated cube banner (if not playing, please click to reopen in new tab)

Social Media:

I created a social media branch of this campaign as these platforms are known for potential high levels of engagement with brands. I’ve provided several cover page options for Facebook, as well as an option for Twitter. I also designed a transparent overlay that could be used on images posted to Instagram or Pinterest. To promote engagement with the brand, I created a hashtag (“#closeupready”) users could add to their own posts and share back with the Patti Caces social media pages. Despite differences in design, the overall look and feel of each is consistent with the brand identity I created.

Facebook cover image (Option 1)

Facebook cover image (Option 2)

Facebook cover image (Option 3)

Twitter cover image

Overlay graphic for use on Instagram or Pinterest

Potential graphic to share on Facebook

Email:

I designed an email to accompany this campaign that could be sent out to the company mailing list. Again, the promotion draws attention with gorgeous food photos, while inviting recipients to learn more about the film catering services. To be inclusive of other types of clients, I’ve included a smaller promotion related to weddings, a recent client testimonial, and a call for clients to follow the company on Pinterest, an important IMC channel for businesses such as this one (more on that to come). As you can see, the email continues with the color palette and bold typography inspired by the logo for visual consistency.

Sample email featuring my campaign

Website:

Now that I’ve created these various “touch points” where consumers can encounter and engage with the Catered by Patti Caces brand, there needs to be a central point where these consumers can ultimately learn all they need to know about the business. Today, that point is overwhelmingly a functional and updated website. The website homepage is designed very much like other pieces of the campaign with large photos that can draw in potential clients. Although bright and colorful, with color palette and typography consistent, the content is provided in a simple, easy-to-use fashion. A rotating image gallery would include current promotions (such as the one I’ve designed for the on-set catering business) while the body of the site would direct potential clients to various pages featuring services the company provides. Client testimonials on the homepage can also help attract potential clients by giving them just enough to convince them to reach out to the company for more information. The footer of the website would also provide potential clients with various ways to engage with the company, including basic contact information, signing up for the mailing list, or following on social media.

Website wireframe design

Full color webpage design based on wireframe

SUMMARY:

Aside from the various marketing channels I’ve designed for above, there are several other opportunities for further visual IMC out there. An e-newsletter that includes recipes, information about new products or services, photos and reviews could help remind potential clients of the company’s services so that they think of Catered by Patti Caces first when they have a special event. As mentioned before, Pinterest is a great place for visually interesting companies such as this one to subtly promote their business through the posting of photos, recipes, decor or event planning ideas. This could be a great opportunity for the company to not only show off their expertise, but to attract new clients.

In summary, it was a great pleasure to design a brand identity for Catered by Patti Caces. After reading through their entire website and seeking out reviews of the business, I knew a dedicated, client-focused business such as this one needed to have a greater brand presence not just for the good of the company, but for the good of those potential clients out there. With this in mind, I tried to design a visual identity and brand campaign that would appeal to a wide audience and portray the company as one that is experienced, welcoming and attractive to work with. Through this creative process, I learned a lot about designing for a real client and look forward to similarly challenging work in the future.

Editing video and adding graphics and animation in Photoshop

Posted on April 3, 2015 by vgrunewald

Disclaimer: This blog and its author are not affiliated with Ojai Olive Oil Company in any way. Designs featuring their likeness are for educational use only.

This week, I edited video for the first time and I did so in Photoshop. Before this week, I didn’t even know you could edit video in Photoshop, so I was impressed with the number of features and fair ease of use. I followed this lynda.com tutorial to edit the provided video. The video features the founder of Ojai Olive Oil Company discussing the history of his farm’s olive grove and the olive oil production process. There is a lot of beautiful scenery throughout however the speaking portion of the piece is pretty dry and the accompanying soundtrack is a little hokey. The video and audio are provided on a single track, so unfortunately, the music had to stay.

I first edited the video to shorten its length. The original video is about two minutes long. According to an article posted on The Next Web, testimonial or “talking head” videos should be between 60 and 119 seconds in length for marketing purposes so that it will appeal to a wider audience online than just those who really want to learn more about the company. I edited out some superfluous frames from the start so that my opening screen – the first thing consumers see when they come across the video – is intriguing with the image of a sign pointing the way to learn more about Ojai Olive Oil. I also cut out the entire second portion of the video that discussed the olive oil production process since the video cuts off in the middle of the description. After editing my video, it’s now 68 seconds.

I created a new logo for the company to include in the video since their current logo is outdated and not very flexible since it includes very detailed imagery. I updated the logo with new typography (Dancing Script and Roboto Condensed from Google Fonts) and included the brighter colors from their website color palette – deep blue and gold – for a more contemporary design. I created a couple olives in Illustrator and brought them into Photoshop to dot the i’s in “Ojai.” For my title screen, I faded the logo in on a semi-transparent background and then changed the logo style and opacity to move it into the bottom right corner of the screen for the majority of the video – this is called an ID bug. I also faded in a brief line of text to describe the contents of the video – “About Our Ojai Farm.”

For the founder’s interview, I included a feathered, semi-transparent lower-third in gold with the gentleman’s name and title to give him credibility. I moved and faded out the lower third once he was off-screen so the viewer could take in all of the gorgeous scenery featured at this point in the video.

To end the video, I faded out the founder as he wraps up a discussion on the colors of ripening olives. As a cute transition between the interview and the closing slide, I created a separate, taller layer scattered with the olives I created for the logo and triggered an animation to show them falling down the screen. This then fades into the now full-color logo and company contact information.

Overall, after I understood how the animation tools worked, I enjoyed using Photoshop for basic video editing and animation. I also see how video editing can become extremely time consuming, editing out frames and adjusting fades and effects by the tenth of a second. The animation I played with is fairly smooth, but I believe for motions more complex than simple direct movements or rotations across the screen, Photoshop probably isn’t the best program.

Designing for Brands on Social Media

Posted on March 26, 2015 by vgrunewald

Disclaimer: This blog and its author are not affiliated with discoverlosangeles.com or the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board in any way. Designs featuring their likeness are for educational use only.

Social media continues to be a growing marketing platform for brands seeking to engage with the most consumers possible and to promote themselves to targeted groups of users. Despite the rising number of social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are considered three required social networks in which brands should actively participate. This week, I created a potential Summer 2015 brand awareness campaign for the Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board and their LA tourism website, discoverlosangeles.com. I wanted to create a social media campaign targeted at young professionals and millennials, encouraging them to seek out a more exciting summer vacation and visit Los Angeles this summer. The title of the campaign is “Not your ordinary summer. Discover the extraordinary.”

My Facebook cover photos are set to 851 x 315 px. In my first design, I kept the text simple, horizontal across the middle of the image while on my second design I chose to stack the text on the right side in all caps. I added a drop shadow to the text for both to help it pop. Either design allows ample space for the Facebook profile picture. I also included the Discover Los Angeles logo on two of my Facebook designs, however on my third Facebook design, I included a hashtag, #discovertheextraordinary, instead as another way to promote engagement with the brand on social media. When the logo is not included in the cover image, it could appear in the profile picture. My third design is also drastically different from the prior two, using a grayscale photo with white text in pink text boxes. This pink color is a part of the discoverlosangeles.com color palette, adding another element of the brand to the campaign. Black and white color palettes featuring pops of color are a popular design for brands marketing to my same target audience. I created layer comps of my different Facebook designs and exported them as a PDF so they could easily be shared and seen in one document with the client, even if they don’t have Photoshop.

To build on my Facebook campaign, I would design a profile picture to complement the accompanying cover photo, tying in the respective color palette and typography. I would also create related Facebook timeline posts featuring information on upcoming exciting summer events in LA, as well as design additional sunny, enticing photos and graphics with the hashtag #discovertheextraordinary. To increase user engagement, we could create a more interactive aspect of the campaign with posts asking “How will you make your summer extraordinary?” that could even include a contest to win a trip to Los Angeles this summer, sponsored by the LA Tourism & Convention Board.

My Twitter cover photo is set to 1500 x 600 px. According to a 2015 Pew Research Center report on social media use, the majority of Twitter users are between 18 and 29 years old, so I decided to feature a cover image that would appeal more to this age group. I also opted to carry over the typography design and pink color from my third Facebook cover photo, including the hashtag to encourage user engagement. The result is an image that overall has a young and summery feel that would surely appeal to my target audience.

Finally, I created a simple banner that could be used on the discoverlosangeles.com Instagram page on a variety of photos. The banner features the logo (rotated vertically) and the statement “this isn’t your ordinary summer,” again reinforcing the campaign that Los Angeles is a more exciting place to be than any other this summer. I kept the banner text-based with a transparent background so it could be easily overlaid onto any Instagram photo, without taking away from the photograph itself. The text is in white with the pop of pink, adding just enough emphasis while remaining aesthetically pleasing.

Across my designs, I included enticing photographs of Los Angeles that would appeal to my target audience, including references to technology, music, and activities such as surfing and skateboarding. I used a contemporary sans serif font, Avenir, in various forms, across all of my designs and overlaid the text in white for a modern and trendy feel. To create a sense of integration across all of my social channels and follow the best practices of IMC, I used this same typography style and photographs with the same general look and feel. I used the same pop of pink in one of my Facebook banners, in my Twitter banner and in my Instagram design. If my client were to choose one of the Facebook banners without the pink, I would work with them to see if they would want to include the pink in that banner or to remove it from the Twitter and Instagram designs completely since I believe these designs would also work well in all white.

If I were to expand my social media campaign for the LA Tourism & Convention Board and discoverlosangeles.com, I would recommend including Pinterest and Snapchat. According to an article posted by TechCrunch, Snapchat is the third largest social network among users 18 – 34 years old (my target audience), behind Facebook and Instagram. Twitter comes in fourth, and Pinterest is fifth. Both Snapchat and Pinterest are built on the concept of sharing photos and re-sharing photos, which would fit in well with my current campaign. On Snapchat, my campaign can feature photos of the cool and interesting sites in Los Angeles, such as the iconic street art and unique individuals that represent the hipness of the city, along with our campaign hashtag and variations of our campaign copy. On Pinterest, we could create a board specifically for our campaign featuring photos and graphics that relate to the theme of “how to have an extraordinary summer” in Los Angeles. If my client chose to incorporate the pink color in their Facebook, Twitter and Instagram campaigns, I would want to incorporate this color in all of our graphics in some way (either in text or using the color replacement tool in photos or graphics) as a signature of the campaign.

Designing an email for shoe lovers in Photoshop

Posted on March 20, 2015 by vgrunewald

Disclaimer: This blog and its author are not affiliated with DSW in any way. Designs featuring their likeness are for educational use only.

Building upon the banner ads I created for DSW last week, this week I designed a branded email DSW could send to it’s female customers. The main promotion in the email is the spring sandal sale previously advertised in the banner ads. I decided to keep the promotion largely the same so as to follow best IMC practices. It’s commonly said in marketing that a customer needs to be “touched” by or exposed to a company’s message seven times before they engage with the brand. By keeping the messaging consistent between my banners and email campaign, DSW already has two of those touch points covered.

I got inspiration for my email campaign from an Express email I received with the subject line: “The 6 must-have festival accessories.” While I don’t often open promotional emails, I clicked on this one because of the term “must-have” and the reference to a specific number of items. Thanks to Buzzfeed, I’m automatically drawn to lists as quick ways to gather information, and by inferring that I “must have” these particular items. I’m sure I’m not the only one who felt compelled to open this email, which is why I would try to replicate it’s success for DSW with a subject line: “Your must-have sandals are here and on sale.” As a shoe lover, I know I would want to know what sandals I “must have.”

Promo email from Express – my inspiration

For my design, I opted for a 620 px width (500-650 px is standard). I started with the elements that should come first in a well-designed email: a header and navigation. For brand consistency, I mimicked the header layout of dsw.com and DSW promotional emails. I included links to view the email in a browser and to forward the email to a friend at the top of the page, since these are two actions DSW would encourage. As I explained in my previous post, DSW keeps a minimal design in order to keep the focus on their products. I continued the color palette I used in my banners: black and white, with a pop of pink. I used two fonts in my overall design: Prata (from Google Fonts) for a stylish editorial-like serif that is similar to the DSW logo font, and Myriad Pro for body text and readability.

Since my customers will click on my DSW email expecting to see the promised must-have sandals, I wanted to make this promotion front and center. I used the “Think open toes” copy from my banner ads and referenced the same sandal sale and offer code. I used the same button style for consistency.

I kept my shoe images (cleaned up with the magic wand tool) and accompanying text large so the reader could fully appreciate them on their computers and mobile devices. It was difficult to decide just how large to make my promotion because I wanted there to be enough content “above the fold.” I researched online for common email heights, however found discrepancies in the answer. I decided to make 600 px my “fold” and design enough content above it so readers would automatically want to scroll down. With my main sandal promotion starting at the very top of the email body, the reader will see at least part of it regardless of screen height.

To show a clear start and end to my main promotion, I used a double line similar to the border I designed for my banner ads. I also used this line style to frame a smaller promotion. For easier coding purposes, I designed my email in a series of boxes so that it could be easily sliced in Photoshop and imported into Dreamweaver.

I created three smaller promotions below my main. All are designed for women, my target audience. I continued the pink color I used earlier and the same fonts. To me, DSW is a retailer strictly focused on promoting it’s products, so I created smaller promotions featuring other products of interest. Since this email will be sent out in Q2, the spring season, I wanted to highlight Mother’s Day and wedding season, to encourage customers to think ahead and make these purchases now. In the gift cards promotion, I created my own version of a DSW gift card using shapes since online images were limited.

In my footer, I included a couple smaller features, including a link to the store locator and the option to sign in to your DSW rewards account. I also added basic social media icons in black to keep with the overall color palette. At the very bottom of the footer, underneath the copyright and contact information, I included the required link to unsubscribe from the DSW email list. It’s common to find this link, in small print, at the bottom of emails, since the brand doesn’t really want you to unsubscribe. I kept with this web standard so in case someone does want to unsubscribe, they will know exactly where to look.

Overall, I believe my email design fits in with the current DSW brand standards and is consistent with the look and feel of the banner ads I created last week. Together, my banner ads and email would be a great start to a DSW spring sandal marketing campaign – one of which I know I and other shoe lovers would definitely notice.

Using Photoshop to create static and animated banner ads

Posted on March 12, 2015 by vgrunewald

Disclaimer: This blog and its author are not affiliated with DSW in any way. Designs featuring their likeness are for educational use only.

My class continues to dig deeper into the practical uses of Photoshop in the creation of various marketing materials. Whether you’re measuring impressions or click-throughs, banner ads can be an extremely cost-efficient form of advertising. Although there is active debate over banner ads and their overall effectiveness, one thing is for sure — banner ads can reach an enormous amount of eyeballs, and that’s never a bad thing in advertising. This week, I created a proposed Q2 marketing campaign for shoe retailer, DSW and designed a set of banner ads in varying sizes to promote the campaign.

Banner ads can be tailored and displayed to a specific target audience. In my DSW campaign, I envision the ads being shown to female users who visit online retailers and fashion sites. Since Q2 covers the spring season, and with much of the country recovering from a hard winter, I created a campaign around a sandal sale to get women thinking about what they’ll wear in the (hopefully) upcoming warmer weather: “Forget frozen toes. Think open toes.”

DSW’s current brand standards are completely centered around their products. Their slogan, “Where’d you get those shoes?”, puts the conversational focus right on your feet. Their logo and website design is based on a black and white color palette, allowing their trendy and colorful shoes to be the central focus. Advertisements (see examples below) typically feature large images of shoes, not always accompanied by models.

Screenshot of DSW website (dsw.com)

DSW’s advertising method is to entice viewers with the latest foot fashion trends, followed by the lure of discounted prices. This was the basis for my campaign. I chose to use stand-alone images of DSW’s colorful new sandal arrivals, taken as screen shots from the DSW website and cleaned up using the magic wand tool. I kept the rest of the color palette minimal to correspond with the ad’s destination, the DSW website. I did use a pop of pink to draw attention to certain text.

To keep consistent with the DSW website, I used the same typography: Myriad Pro for the body text, and, because I could not find a quality ready-made logo online, I used Trajan Pro to recreate the DSW logo (as verified to be the correct font by whatthefont.com). I also created the sandals button, identical to those used on DSW’s website to direct users to various departments, to give viewers something familiar to click on and lead them to the women’s sandals department page.

When creating each banner, I had to focus on size, margins and proportion of each piece of content so that all banners appeared balanced. The order of the content did not vary much. Font sizes were adjusted for each banner, ensuring the text was legible, correct in proportion with appropriate line-split. The “frozen toes” line is always a couple points smaller than the “open toes” line. The spring sale promotional text is formatted and sized so that it is aesthetically pleasing on the eye, with no awkward overhangs. For the images, they, too, had to be resized from banner to banner, and were realigned vertically for the taller skyscraper banner. For the button ad, only one shoe image was used and the sale promotion text dropped due to the limited size. Regardless of size, I used guide lines to ensure there was enough white space and margins around the content and that content was balanced on the left and right sides of the ads.

Leaderboard: 728 x 90

Rectangle: 300 x 250

Skyscraper: 160 x 600

Button: 320 x 75

I also created an animated GIF of my skyscraper banner in Photoshop using the Timeline panel. I created three sets of different shoes so that each slide of the GIF would display a different set. This way, a targeted viewer would see a wider range of DSW products and hopefully be that much more enticed to click on the ad. Click on the GIF below to open in new window and view animation.

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