Top Down
Project: Top Down Visual Identity
Client: Top Down
Capacity: Personal Project
Role: Visual Identity & Branding Design
Project Background:
Challenge:
Top Down is a dream company for Keara Fenzel. They craft a hard seltzer for women in their late 20’s who enjoy sipping their drinks by a fire pit, on the beach, or at happy hour after a long day of work. Top Down prides itself on unique, complex flavors in a light, effervescent drink. Its for women who enjoy both lounging at craft cocktail bars as well as exploring adventures outdoors.
“Top Down is about the feeling when you’re driving in a convertible, blasting music with your friends, and loving life. We want to bottle that feeling.”
Goal:
Design a strong visual identity and logo to showcase Top Down’s mission statement, appeal to their target market, and stand apart from competitors.
Process:
Brand Definition Research:
I conducted an interview to understand the target audience and voice. This created an objective road map to filter all future branding decisions through.
"Life should be bubbly, sunny, and fun"
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"When everyone is stuck inside, we’re missing that outside, summertime freedom"
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"more sophisticated, complex seltzer for more mature palettes"
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"We make hard seltzer that helps you find that sunshine feeling no matter the weather"
Customer
- Millennials (25-35)
- Women
- Hip & Sophisticated
- Adventurous/Go Getter
- Social
Voice
- Summery
- Feminine but Strong
- Effervescent
- Jovial & Free
- Sophisticated & Elegant (not
overly stuffy)
Benefit
- Recharged
- Relaxed
- Carefree
- Elevated
Value
- Empowered
- Mature Palette
- Worry Free
- Artistic
From this, a brand story emerged.
Brand Story: Top Down provides a elevated, carefree experience for social, adventurous young women in a warm atmosphere, leaving them feeling relaxed and jovial.
These adjectives created a clear path for Top Down’s creative tone: Carefree Sophistication
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I created a mood board of images I felt reflected this creative tone to reference during my design process.
Ideation:
Through sketching I drafted over 150 logo options and narrowed it down to my top favorites. I focused on creating sleek lines and minimalist visuals as well as the idea of a convertible with its “top down” driving into warm sunset. These decisions captured the carefree, warm, summery feeling while also adding sophistication.
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I explored different typefaces searching for a good pair of modern and clean, and artistic/feminine with just enough character.
I presented some low fidelity mock-ups (below) of the top four logos I created to the client to garner any feedback. The third had the most potential, so I moved forward with the design and made some tweaks.
main logo
stacked logo
alternate logo
I then created a basic style guide for future reference.
Outcome:
I designed the product packaging. I chose a sleek glass bottle to convey sophistication as well as making it stand apart from its canned hard seltzer competitors. I implemented vintage elements like sketchy visuals and thin lines, to draw in the elevated, “craft-cocktail bar” feel, but kept the colors light, feminine, and relaxed. The following is the completed brand and logo design for Top Down.
Resolution:
Overall, I was very happy with this visual identity project. It was able to capture the creative tone of "carefree sophistication", form a strong brand identity, and translate that into physical projects and the digital space of social media. One aspect I took away from this project is the importance of logo form. Going forward for future projects I will take in to account creating a logo that could work on a broader scale of applications and sizes instead of having to create alternate logos for those applications.