For the Midtown Bread and Butter case study, I was tasked to create a logo, brand identity, and landing page for Midtown Bread and Butter. The goal was to have a "freshly baked" feel to their brand and draw new customers in.
Role: Art Direction, Graphic Design, Web Design, UX Design, Brand Design
Midtown Bread and Butter is a bakery based out of New York that specializes in freshly baked breads and goods at affordable prices. They value their craftsmanship by only using the finest ingredients, freshly sourced, to create a wide variety of bakery staples as well as the finer delicacies. By having gourmet products baked fresh daily, this gives Midtown an added service that other bakeries may not have while having a unique experience that has a small town vibes in a big city.
I was tasked to create a logo and brand identity for Midtown Bread and Butter. They wanted their logo to have a modern look while still having a healthy perception that people will gravitate towards. Along with this I was tasked to create a landing page for their website. The goal for the page was to promote the healthy options that Midtown offers as well as keep their brand message consistent throughout the design. They wanted to go with a more modern look focusing on images and storytelling and not just having a sales focused look for their landing page.
I started the exploration phase for Midtown Bread and Butter by first looking at various bakery logos and images that represent bakeries. For the logo, I started out by looking at key iconography that other bakeries use that a customer would recognize subliminally link to a bakery. Some of those icons where pieces of bread, wheat, flour, and dough. Along with the icon, I also looked at what various designers were using as their fonts. I found that a good amount of the ones I looked at used more of a script font or a serif font. For Midtown, due to it being out of New York and they wanted a more modern look, I opted with going with a sans-serif font to keep the text clean and modern. For the site, I looked at what restaurants were doing and saw that a majority, rightfully so, focus heavily on images. Being a bakery, the images of the products are the drawing factor and when customers see something that looks appealing they will be more willing to try out the baked goods. Along with this, I wanted to showcase the products with fresh ingredients so that customers will know subliminally that the products that Midtown offers are natural and not processed.
For the logo, I started by looking at other bakeries and how they approached their logo concepts. I came to find out that most will either incorporate bread or wheat into their designs or would just be a word mark. For Midtown Bread and Butter, I tried a couple of different concepts. One of them was using loaves of bread to form a silhouette of the Empire State Building but it didn't turn out as well as I had imagined. I then tried just a single slice of bread along with the wordmark, but it didn't stand out as well as I would have liked. I opted with going with a wheat wreath surrounding the wording of the logo to better represent the baking process, as well as give it more of a fluid vibe. For the colour scheme of the logo, I used a lighter brown for the main colour version of the logo as that light brown best represents loaves of bread. For the font choice, I opted with going with a bold font for the "Midtown" as that was an important aspect to the client since that is the location of their store, and made "Bread and Butter" in a lighter font as it was an addition to the wordmark.
For the homepage, the main message I wanted to pass on to customers was the healthy aspect that Midtown Bread and Butter has. By creating their own bread with the best ingredients and no preservatives, having a healthy-focused homepage in critical for the brand. For the main image, I wanted to show 2 loaves of bread next to wheat to not only portray a freshly baked feel, but also to let customers know that this is a bread company and to get them to product as quickly as possible. The next section of the homepage, I wanted a dedicated space for the story of Midtown Bread and Butter. I felt this was an important aspect as it gives customers an inside look into the company and humanizes the brand. By having this upfront and center, it adds transparency and give the brand a backstory. For the next part, I wanted to display the best selling products that Midtown provides. By having these easily accessible on the homepage lets customers know which products people are interested in and doing the best, so that they could be convinced to purchase them. For the next section, I wanted to include a benefits section to let customers know why they should buy from Midtown. By having points like Gluten Free options, Freshly Baked, Wide Range, and Order Online Pickup In Store are good selling points as they are what customers are looking for, and should answer the most asked questions customers would have. Lastly, I wanted to include an Instagram feed because social media is such a huge part of marketing in the digital space and not including that in the site would be negligent. By having the feed of the newest posts adds relevancy to the site as well as lets customers know the type of content we post and why they should follow Midtown.
Overall, this project was a success. By having creating a logo that gives customers a healthy, natural vibe while still being recognizable were key aspects for Midtown's brand identity. Having a website that give off vibrant images of freshly baked goods gives the perception that Midtown is a fresh bakery and that customers will feel more inclined to check out what Midtown sells. By including key functionality like the best sellers product row, and the instagram feed, it gives customers not only a sense of products that they should aim to get, but also which products Midtown specializes in and the care they take when baking these goods. Also by having Midtown's story right on the homepage, it lets customers know who they are buying their products from and adds a sense of familiarity that some customers tend to appreciate as it gives the perception of a small business and not a large factory entity.
