I’m a huge fan of DIY and crafts – a few years ago, I was obsessed with making scrapbooking albums and cards, creating earrings from polymer clay and designing my own jewellery.
After this short intro about my love for the crafty stuff, you can probably imagine, how excited I was when Beth from Kingston Crafts reach out to me about her brand design. Aside from sharing the passion for DIY and crafts, we share similar brand values which are transparency, focusing more on helping others, not just have business to make a sale.
Beth came to me after being burned out by another designer, so I made sure to fulfil her expectations for her new brand identity and design brand that she can be proud of. Today, I’m super excited to share with you Beth’s new brand design for her business Kingston Crafts! I’ll walk you through my entire brand design process and share each of the brand identity components I come up with.
Below, you’ll find out more about Beth’s brand, her brand keywords. Take a look below, which brand collaterals did she choose. Also, learn about the individualised solution for Kingston Crafts.
UPDATE: In 2019 I had the pleasure to work with Beth again! This time on her WordPress website redesign & moving her Squarespace site to self-hosted WordPress. More in a separate post. Meanwhile, head over to kingstoncrafts.com to see the new WordPress site!
Before I show you each element of brand design, let’s take a look at the brand board showcasing all the elements:
All right, let’s dive into details!
THE CLIENT
THE BRAND
Kingston Crafts is a personal brand for Beth Kingston. She’s a Craft Expert on the Home Shopping Network. On her blog, she shares DIY and crafts, home decor, holiday and party projects.
She also shares a sneak peeks of new Cricut and Xyron products on the blog. Originally, Beth started KC with her husband, but it’s all her now and the goal for the new brand design was to create a visual identity that is appealing to Beth’s target audience, represents her personality and make her proud.
For the tagline, she decided on “the crafter next door” which represents the fact that she focuses on the community around her brand.
KINGSTON CRAFTS MAIN LOGO BEFORE & AFTER REDESIGN:
Before we dive into the brand redesign I worked on for Kingston Crafts let’s take a look at how Beth’s logo looked like before and how does it look now (move mouse over image to see the change)
BRAND KEYWORDS
THE DESIGN PACKAGE
THE PACKAGE INCLUDED:
BRAND IDENTITY DESIGN:
1. Logo design
2. Alternative logo designs
3. Submark designs
4. Colour Palette
Font Combinations
5. Favicon, Pin it button & Dividers
6. Image Holder, Signatures And Catchwords
BRAND COLLATERALS DESIGN:
Social/Digital:
7. Blog Categories Icons
8. Email Signature Design
9. Facebook Branding Design
Print:
10. Business Cards Design
11. Note Cards Design
THE SOLUTION
New brand design for Kingston Crafts represents Beth’s personality, brand values (community, creativity, joy and professionalism) and emphasise the feeling of having a friend (crafter next door). The colourful colour palette represents the joyfulness of Beth’s personality (which shines through each of her YouTube or Facebook Live videos), yet mixed with simple, modern fonts and a lot of white space, it creates a professional and trustworthy feel for her target audience.
1. LOGO DESIGN
The main logo design for Kingston Crafts reflects the joyfulness and friendliness of Beth’s personality (the “craft” part and colours), yet at the same time, it creates a trustworthy and professional feeling – by the use of both sans-serif and script fonts. For the primary logo, I’ve chosen two shades of blue from the colour palette (under 4) because (just like me), Beth is a huge fan of blue. I also added the tagline “the crafter next door”
2. ALTERNATIVE LOGO DESIGNS
The first alternative logo is a stacked version of the main logo, without the tagline. It’s definitely my favourite, because of the letter “f” going through the S in Kingston. The second alternative logo is similar to the primary logo, but the word Crafts is written out in the same font as the Kingston and it’s a stacked version. The third alternative logo is a different colour version of the main one and the third one is similar to the second, but it’s vertical and in one colour.
3. SUBMARK DESIGNS
As usual, I created four submarks for Kingston Crafts – the first one is the business name written out around the circle, the second one is similar, but had the KC initials. The third one has the initials and Beth (it almost looks like her favicon). The last submark logo has the word crafts from the main logo in the middle and Kingston Crafts around it.
4. COLOUR PALETTE
The colour palette for Kingston Crafts was definitely one of the most colourful ones I’ve ever designed. But, I think it’s a great example that “rainbow looking” colour palette, doesn’t have to look childish or unprofessional if you pick the right hues and colour combinations.
5. FAVICON, PIN IT BUTTON & DIVIDERS
For my clients for the brand design package, I usually create up to 7 design elements to complement their new brand identity and website – even if they choose just brand design package, not brand & website design package, their website can be “branded”. So, for Beth, I created a favicon which I’ve mentioned is very similar to the third submark; custom pin it button and four different dividers which she can use on her site and blog.
6. IMAGE HOLDER, SIGNATURES AND CATCH WORDS
The custom image holder for Kingston Crafts, helps Beth to quickly brand her sidebar. The signatures and catchwords can also be used in the sidebar or within the blog posts, for example, to invite her target audience to follow her on social media.
7. BLOG CATEGORIES ICONS
I’ve designed five blog categories icons for Beth (again, my signature illustrated icons) for: SVGs & printables, crafts & DIY, holidays, life, Cricut. I also designed 12 subcategories icons which I’m going to share in a separate blog post about Kingston Crafts WordPress website design (redesign + transferring site from Squarespace to self-hosted WordPress).
8. EMAIL SIGNATURE DESIGN
For the email signature design, I added Beth’s profile picture, main logo, website address and social media icons.
Print:
10. BUSINESS CARDS DESIGN
If I’d have to choose my favourite element from Beth’s brand, the business cards would be definitely my second favourite (after the blog categories icons, of course!). The front of the business card is similar to the Facebook cover, so it has the logo and website URL. The back of the business card has Beth’s details and the social icons just like in the email signature.
11. NOTE CARDS DESIGN
As the fifth brand collateral, I’ve designed note cards for Kingston Crafts. As all the brand design elements, they refer to other collaterals or design elements such as catchword or the outline similar to the one I used in the email signature.
Now, let’s take a look at Kingston Crafts’s brand collaterals. See how cohesive her brand looks like when placed together?
And the cherry on top, a brand design, so brand board and brand collaterals on one image below:
I couldn’t be happier with the way the new brand design for Kingston Crafts turned out! This projects definitely pushed my creativity, because I had to make sure that the brand doesn’t go too childish (because of the rainbow colours). Thanks to a mix of the modern and bright forms and colours, I was able to design a brand that represents Beth’s fun personality 100%, but at the same time, it’s professional and sleek.
I’m so happy that even though Beth had a bad experience with another graphic designer, she trusted me and together, we were able to translate her vision into the actual visual identity.
The cherry on the top, a lovely testimonial from Beth:
BETH KINGSTON
KINGSTON CRAFTS
“I found Adrianna after being “burned” by another designer so I was VERY wary. She was patient, knowledgeable, upfront about the process – she won me over and I couldn’t be more thrilled with the results! So glad I found her!”
If you don’t feel like your brand represent YOU that they attract the wrong clients and it’s incohesive – don’t worry, it doesn’t have to be that way! Take a look at my brand design package by clicking the image below:
If you’re ready to book this package, click here to fill the inquiry form!
What do you think of the brand design for Kingston Crafts? Which design element or collateral of the brand is your favourite?
