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Photograph of Kennebunk Beach (1900), one of the beaches in my home town.
BRANDING AS STORYTELLING & USING HISTORY TO SHAPE AN IDENTITY
Hayley Emmons
© Hayley Emmons All rights reserved Set in Franklin Gothic URW, Whirly Birdie, and FenwayParkJF. Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts, Maine College of Art, Portland Maine, May 11, 2021 Major in Graphic Design. Photographs courtesy of The Library of Congress’ archives. 4
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgments ............................................. 7 Introduction ......................................................... 8 Developing a Brand Concept ........................... 11 Crafting a Visual Identity .................................. 20 Brand in Use ..................................................... 40 Packaging System ............................................. 53 Exhibition ........................................................... 66 Final Thoughts ................................................... 72
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Photograph of Goat Island Light House in Cape Porpoise Harbor (1933), where I spent much of my childhood exploring and watching my dad be extremely passionate about what he does for a living, which is an important trait I would also develop later on in life.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS To my friends — You each inspire me every day to be a better person and creative, and your support has gotten me across this finish line. Thank you for always being my biggest fans. To my mentors and faculty at MECA — Samantha, your lessons and guidance through the many classes I’ve taken with you were crucial to my growth as a designer. Thank you for always giving me the critical feedback I needed and for your dedication to teaching each and every one of us. Margo, you taught me such a strong foundation in design and I know these lessons me will follow me for the rest of my career. Thank you for keeping MECAGD afloat, this department is truly one of a kind. James (as well as the rest of the talented Rugged Coastal team), working with you on this project and the many others have each been great experiences that made my last year and a half of college so exciting and enriching. Thank you for your support. Mark, I feel lucky to have had classes with you before your departure from MECA. Thank you for sharing your attention to detail and passion for type with us. Charles, thank you for guiding us through our final semester of college and encouraging us to make and explore everyday. To my family — Letting your kid go to art school was probably a little scary, but it worked out. Thank you for trusting my passion and ability to find my place in this crazy world.
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Introduction poster created as a starting exercise at the beginning of the semester which were hung in the Joanne Waxman Library at MECA. 8
this thesis is an exploration of branding as
storytelling, and shaping an identity with history. Although I want to try new places and live in new cities, I’ve always felt very strongly about my Maine roots — so what better way to finish my four years at Maine College of Art than celebrating that. This idea sprung on me early last winter when I was browsing the shelves of a local bookstore and found a book with the title My Love Affair With The State of Maine. The title really caught my attention, and then I noticed a book sitting directly under it titled Eminent Mainers, which serves as an index of people with unique stories of people who are from or lived in Maine. After holding on to the book for a few weeks it was time to actually begin writing a thesis proposal for the start of my last semester. I landed on a project that is built from my love of storytelling, visual identity systems, history, and the state of Maine. This book is a documentation of the project, the process, and the outcomes, as well as insight on what I’ve learned, what I’ve been inspired by, and what I’ve made on this four year journey of pursuing graphic design — my greatest passion. During my time at MECA, I have developed skills around this passion for storytelling and have been able to explore that through the lens of branding. A large piece of our need to visually communicate stems from representation. For centuries we have used symbols, flags, and seals to represent our heritage, geographical location, and other important cultural information that brings relevance to who we are. When I think of my own work in terms of
historical precedents, this idea is a huge part of why I make the work I do. As a designer, visually communicating my ideas as, well as the ideas of others, is something I do every day. A piece of our history that I feel especially influenced by and connected to is the notion of branding. Branding has been a part of our lifestyle since we could visually communicate clearly, dating back more than 4,000 years ago when people branded their cattle and other livestock. This concept is something we encounter everyday and is a large part of our culture. We create distinct identities for different products and brands that, with time and regard, become recognizable to generations of people around the world. For example the Coca Cola logo, which was designed in 1886 by John Stith Pemberton, is an internationally recognized mark that can be identified by people with no context surrounding it. This historical example is one of many brands that have visuals that have cemented their place in our culture as a society. Creating brand identities is what my practice primarily consists of, so this concept and history of making visual connections through communication is extremely important to me.
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Vintage Maine beer ads.
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to kick off this project, I spent time
considering what the brand stands for and established values before diving into the visuals. At this point in the process, I started meeting with my mentor who helped me work through setting the foundation of the brand. I knew that I wanted the brewery to have a primary mission of sharing Maine’s heritage as well as supporting values that are reflective of the values the State as a whole. Black-Capped Beer Company is committed to making connections through their high quality beer and encouraging drinkers to learn more about Maine while sharing their own stories. 11
BRAND VALUES
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SHARING HISTORY
While our beer is top quality it’s our Maine roots . Our packaging, language, and brand as a whole revolve around this core idea — and sharing it with everyone who drinks our beer.
CREATING CONNECTIONS THROUGH COMMUNITY
With storytelling comes connections, and we hope our love of sharing all things Maine will build a community of Mainer’s who love beer and our state.
QUALITY BEER
The backbone of Maine was built on thoughtful craftsmanship and quality. The brand should not only reflect this in its product, but also in the visual system that supports it.
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MISSION STATEMENT
BLACK-CAPPED BEER COMPANY IS A MAINE BASED BREWERY THAT’S ALL ABOUT MAKING CONNECTIONS AND SHARING MAINE’S HERITAGE. 14
While our beer is top quality, it’s our Maine roots that really make us special. Whether you’re sipping one of our beers in our brewery in Portland Maine, traversing Maine’s trails, or sailing the salty Atlantic ocean, our beers are a Mainer’s go to brew. We invite you to enjoy our Maine made craft beer while learning about the Mainer’s that make the pine tree state one of a kind. 15
DESIGN VALUES
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HISTORICAL, AUTHENTIC, BOLD, RUGGED, OUTDOORSY.
INSPIRATION &
INFLUENCES*
* For this project and beyond.
after brand values were established and
visual research was conducted it was time to actually start tackling what this brand would look like. Many of the objects I pulled inspiration from had quirky script lettering on them which I loved. I had done one script wordmark previous to this, but I knew this would be new territory for me. I wanted a level of precision in creating this type, but I also wanted it to have very specific characteristics. So I hit the drawing board (aka the light table in 311) and spent many hours over the course of a month working through sketches, starting from scratch, and revisiting visual research. This felt very tedious, but forced me to be patient which I think I needed amongst the chaos of thesis and also the current global pandemic. The following is pieces of this exploration, and the results. Each of the visual pieces work together to drive home what the brand stands for, represents, and it’s values. 20
Photograph of two Maine shipyard workers intently reading a local newspaper.
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THE FOLLOWING IS A GLIMPSE AT THE TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS OF AN AMATEUR TYPE DESIGNER TACKLING A HAND-LETTERED SCRIPT WORDMARK.*
* With guidance from a few people who know an incredible amount of things about type. 23
The first of many sketches I did while exploring this wordmark.
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PRIMARY
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SECONDARY*
* Because I soon learned the harsh realities of working with a wordmark that has a slanted baseline 29
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Hand-lettered wordmark inspired by type found on old beer labels and ephemera.
Descriptor set in brand typeface.
Slanted baseline, also inspired by the many vintage beer labels and logos I looked as at the start of this project.
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MONOGRAM
ICONOGRAPHY 33
COLOR
color inspiration was pulled from a variety of
visual sources. I spent the entirety of the semester considering color, as I wasn’t sure about how to brand would evolve during the process. The final palette is used across applications and packaging and reflects Maine’s heritage through saturation and tone and swatches that reference Maine’s outdoors. 34
CHICKADEE WHITE
CAP BLACK
PANTONE 11-0105 TPG RGB: 237, 231, 212 CMYK: 6, 6, 16, 0 EEE7D4
LIGHT PINE
PANTONE 350 U RGB: 84, 103, 88 CMYK: 68, 25, 67, 51 546758 35
PANTONE BLACK C RGB: 45, 41, 38 CMYK: 65, 66, 68, 82 2D2926
NORTH STAR NAVY PANTONE 539 U RGB: 70, 80, 98 CMYK: 100, 64, 12, 57 465062
DARK SALMON
PANTONE 2436 C RGB: 182, 83, 62 CMYK: 3, 73, 72, 19 B6533E
WHIRLY BIRDIE
BOLD, BOLD ITALIC, NARROW BOLD, NARROW BOLD ITALIC. abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789!@#$%&
TYPOGRAPHY
FRANK GOTHIC URW BOOK, BOOK ITALIC, DEMI, DEMI ITALIC. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789!@#$%&
FenwayParkJF
Regular ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 0123456789!@#$%&
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I’ve always had an interest in typography
— I can remember cutting out pages and headlines in my mother’s magazines, holding onto packaging and envelopes, and being drawn to certain posters or signs I saw. I just didn’t know until later in life that this could be my creative outlet, or that it could be the building blocks of my creative practice. For the past few years, I’ve spent many weekend hours digging through shelves and piles of old packaging, letterheads, books, and signs. Looking at all these years of ephemera has had a major impact on my work. I have a little spark of excitement when I find interesting typography and form in these sort of “throw away” objects from history. There’s excitement in the perfectly imperfect pieces of design, the things that break the rules and make you think about typography in a different way. I think this has inspired me to take on graphic design in a different way, due to the fact that I’ve learned “design rules” during my time at MECA. I feel that I have a pretty good grasp on following and breaking design “rules”. The design I’m inspired by has both elements of clean systems and odd vintage typography with a little bit of grit. As for my work visually, I have been influenced heavily by certain points in history. One historical period that I feel has directly impacted my work is the American Industrial Revolution. Although I have interests in design from before the start of the twentieth century, I feel this development and shift in technology shaped design in a really interesting way. More specifically, this advancement in printing
practices created tremendous change in terms of typography. The range of type styles, sizes, and possibilities during the process of creating type exploded. A wide variety of extremely expressive typefaces came from these new processes, making the world of graphic design more widespread than ever before. I feel that this era of design is where my love of type design and letterforms is rooted. The intricacies and quirks of woodblock type, and how they were used in compositions really fostered my love of typography, and taught me just how much character a single letterform can have. In contrast to this interest in design from the Industrial Revolution, I feel my work is informed heavily by the less academic side of graphic design as well. Like I mentioned previously, ephemera from a variety of eras has always been influential to my practice as a designer. A combination of grit, language, and humanness found in these throw away objects from the past, packaging, signs, advertisements, manuals, etc., is something that I admire greatly. A lot of the objects I look at were more than likely designed haphazardly, by hand, and or by someone who isn’t necessarily a designer or artist. The bending of typical typographic conventions and design rules makes these historical objects feel like they have a story, which is why they are interesting to me. Typography for Black-Capped encompasses these interests, as well as inspiration from anti-prohibition posts and signs, which all band together to reinforce the brands mission statement visually. 37
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TYPE LOCKUPS
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* BREWERY FLAGS & PROCESS
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Hand painted brewery flags on canvas (created when I needed a midway break from the computer).
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the largest part of my thesis is the packaging
system I created to use as a vessel for telling these Maine stories. I was able to make 5 cans in total, which are each rooted in one visual structure but with unique shifts in design based on the story each can tells. Each label features an illustration of the Mainer the can profiles as well as a write up about their story. There was a long list of people I wanted to research, but I ended up doing cans on the first person to hike the Appalachian Trail, LL Bean’s founder, the famous author Stephen King, a Maine astronaut, and the first registered Maine guide. Can photography by ArtDoc at MECA. 53
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* BEAN BOOT
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* FLY ROD
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* EXPEDITION 61
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* AVERY PEAK
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* EXPEDITION 61
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* DEAD ZONE
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* END IMAGE (STILL AT ART DOC)
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each of us were assigned a space in the
building to show our thesis work in the thesis exhibition in May. I knew immediately that I wanted to paint a mural or some of the brand assets on my wall with a display for the packaging. So after weeks of sketching and planning, and days of installation I ended up with a full wall that shows bits and pieces of this project. The following is a small look into the process and the outcome. 66
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* WRITING ABOUT EXHIBITION & PROCESS
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This project allowed me to explore a variety of my interests, which each have an important impact on my practice as well as who I am as a person. Developing Black-Capped Beer Company was an ideal way to end my time at MECA because it forced me to utilize many of the skills I learned over the past 4 years. Thank you again to the very important people acknowledged at the beginning of this book. 72
The Porteous & Mitchell building in Portland, Maine, home to the MECA community and my place of growth over the past 4 years.
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