Project Overview

Liquid Sunshine is a wine pairing and event hosting passion project out of Rochester, NY. As a WSET Level 3 certified professional my client needed early stage branded materials for his company that included logo design, brand color palette and business cards.

My Role

I was hired as a designer with the responsibility of creating a new logo, brand color palette and business cards. I primarily used Procreate for the business card and logo design and Figma for brand palette design and any mockups.

Design Challenges

There were two main challenges with this project. The first with the logo design and meeting the clients criteria from their initial design concept (see image below). My client requested to keep the “L” for the word Liquid as a part of the stem and that a Sunshine element be incorporated as a visual element in the grapes below.

The second challenge was creating a strong visual for the business card that expressed the mission statement and intention of the brand. To overcome these challenges I held several meetings with the client where we discussed their design preferences, important branding messages and any visual dislikes. Via these meetings I was able to narrow down a design concept for the cards, logo design and for the color palette that they loved and wanted me to proceed with.

Design Process

Logo Design

I started with the Logo and was supplied these concept designs.

Based on those designs I created this set of concepts.

My client selected this one as the base for the new logo.

I created this higher fidelity mock, which the client loved and gave me the green light on creating a final version.

I produced these finals for my clients' review.

My client loved the first design and I proceeded to send them the final logo design files.

Color Palette

Once I had the logo designs completed, I moved on to establishing a color palette for the brand. I met with my client who wanted a brand palette that used either the colors of wine or typical colors found on a winery. I used that information to create these color palettes.

My client liked the second and fourth palettes but wanted to see a palette that was closer to the color of a classic Pinot Noir.

My client liked this palette the best and decided to go with it as the brand's color palette.

Business Card

The last part of the project was to create business cards for the brand. In order to create a truly unique business card I met with my client to nail down their branding mission, offerings and messaging with the intent to use that information to create a personalized card. Here is the information I gathered.

Business offerings

• Guided tastings
• Sip n’ chats
• Consulting on wine lists/wine trends for restaurants
• Dinners with food and wine pairings.

Brand values

• Being a judgment free
• Anti-snobby
• Curiosity, truth & honesty
• Wine shouldn’t be taken so seriously

Brand Message
Liquid Sunshine is approachable, knowledgeable and serious about wine. An event should be accommodating of all people, ranging from novices to experts.

After collecting all of that information from my client I started the ideation phase of design. I started by going to Pinterest to do some visual research. I ended up landing on the idea of creating a scene with my client in the center to represent what it would be like if a client participated in one of their events.

I created this first sketch to get feedback on the concept from the client.

My client liked the concept so I created a higher fidelity mockup.

My client liked the card but requested that there should be an even amount of male characters to female ones. They also requested that their character in the card stand out more. I agreed with that feedback and got to work creating another version. On further reflection on the designs I felt that it felt visually cluttered with the amount of yellow on the card. In the next version I decided to pair back the character's design to use the pinot red whereas the owner's character would be made to stand out by having a character color of the gold.

My client loved this design. To finish the project off I sent my client an array of business cards back with their contact information, my client chose the one that they liked best and I sent them the final business card files.

Here are the final results:

Final Outcome

My client was very happy with the final logo design, color palette and business cards.