The Jolly Hog

from Colleen Woolsey - Portfolio (GRA 491)

by Colleen Woolsey

PetDigs

Instructor

Sean Bacon & Bradford Prairie

Course

Portfolio A

Focus

Branding

Typefaces

Crimson Text

Artisan Butcher Shop

The Jolly Hog is a full service artisan butcher shop that utilizes the whole animal to help minimize food waste. Jolly Hog fills the need for healthy alternatives to the meats that are being offered at large chain grocery stores. The Jolly Hog is a sustainable and humane business for all meat lovers and aficionados, but primarily targets men aged 32–47.

I wanted The Jolly Hog to be both fun and welcoming to the customer. This butcher shop is unique, so I avoided the use of colors typically associated with butcher shops (the most common of which is red— often associated with the gruesome nature of meat production). The brand is high end while being cheeky and witty with a brand voice that includes the use of meat related puns in a sophisticated serif. The bright yellow palette helps reinforce a positive look and feel. The pattern is made up of dancing pigs amongst carving knives—inspired by the 1919 chromo promoting Good sausages from the PRODIGAL PIG— which features a very alive pig slashing himself into thick sausage rounds.

design in mind

LOGO REFINEMENT

Concept: My initial sketch for The Jolly Hog included a pig jumping over the word ‘The.’ I wanted to incorporate a visual action that was typically associated with being jolly or happy while keeping the typography in a tight lock-up. I envisioned ‘Jolly Hog’ being in a western inspired, bold typeface with sharp edges and small burs on the sides.

Vectorization: When going from a sketch to a vector graphic, I ran into spacing issues between the jumping pig and the sizing of ‘The.’ Including the pig meant keeping the word at such a small font size that when scaled down the word was completely illegible. I started playing with other locations and typefaces for the word and different styles of pig illustrations.

Typographic Updates: I started exploring a more typographic direction for the logo, and including the pig into other aspects of the branding. This allowed for a cleaner, tighter lock-up of the logo and clear legibility of the word ‘The.’ At this point I started playing with the idea of an inline of the words ‘Jolly Hog.’ The original typeface created tight areas that created tension for the viewer and issues when printed at smaller sizes.

Final Logo: The final logo has a clean, simplified condensed custom serif typeface. In lieu of an inline, I used the yellow of the brand to create a thin offset highlight inspired by old world, hand painted signage. I hand drew the elegant and swirling ampersand and word ‘the’ to match one another and bring in vertical balance. Crimson Text was selected for it’s sharp, high contrast serif to complement the angular serifs of the custom typeface.