Swanky Sugar is an event based cotton candy company founded by our good friend Susan DeLong. A lover of cotton candy since she was a child, Susan aims to bring the joy of spun sugar to weddings, birthday parties, and all kinds of events. She came to us looking for branding to match her vision.
Susan came to us with good ideas of the type of brand she wanted, from a basic color palette to visual references. We explored her competition, defined the brand values, and agreed on an approach that matched her vision, while bringing a refined look that was missing in the marketplace. Bringing people back to their childhoods was a big goal of the brand, so we leaned into retro influences with 50s and 60s inspired colors and graphics. And above all, we endeavored to make it “swanky”.
Our primary logo is maximalist, with hand-drawn lettering and graphic details reminiscent of retro diner signage. Expanding into the rest of the brand, we pull out elements of that logo to build patterns, secondary logos, and illustration. The color palette started with a set of paint swatches that Susan brought us, refined to work together as a set and give proper contrast in applications.
As we started to flesh out the brand, we continued to reference childhood joy and memories. When we got to imagery, we decided to specifically reference the memories of Susan. We took real photos from her real family photo albums and carefully scanned them in. Then we added colorful cotton candy along with our retro 60s shapes to create beautiful illustrative collages. These became a big part of the website as well.
