Hulya: Crafting a Recognizable and Proactive Brand

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Hulya

Plant Retail & Education

During my internship with Hydra Design Group, I was tasked to create a brand story, logo and mock-ups for a hypothetical brand called Hulya. The goal of this project is to help Hulya become a recognizable brand that stands out in the industry, to be able to encourage people to start their own urban garden, and to promote the use of environmental friendly and sustainable tools and methods.

Hulya is centred around health, well-being and communication. It would like to promote the use of sustainable tools and methods for gardening. It is a plant education/retail store that gives its customers the option to grow their own food or buy organically grown food from Hulya’s garden. Hulya hopes to be able to encourage people to live a healthier lifestyle by starting their own garden. Hulya offers a wide variety of seeds, pots, soil mixtures, fertilisers and hybrid plants that will help produce more output with less input. Aside from vegetables and fruits, they also sell various herbs and spices. Unlike other plant retail stores, Hulya also offers cooking demonstrations, plant nurturing classes and gardening workshops.

Hulya would like to give young Filipinos more access to quality garden supplies meant for urban gardening, provide more seed varieties, and offer more efficient pots, soil mixtures, and hybrid plants the produce more output with less input.

Stylescapes: Establishing the overall direction
It’s always important to get on the same page with the client at the start of the project. A good tool for this is creating a Stylescape. These Stylescapes are used to visually represent the overall look and feel. The chosen stylescape for Hulya revolves mostly around 3 keywords: Friendly, Welcoming, and Sustainable.

Concept and Design Development

The challenge was to create a mark that is unique, but at the same time familiar. Given that Huyla was in the plant retail and education industry, it was important for me to stray away from the usual ‘plant’. ‘agriculture’, and ‘leaf concepts’ In this stage, it was also important for me to explore concepts that can also evoke the brand’s personality.

Further Concept Exploration

From the initial exploration, I dove deeper into one of the proposed concept. With Egypt being one of the origins of horticulture, the logo was highly influence by the Egyptian hieroglyphic of sectioned or irrigated land. It was also influenced by the layout of the gardens and fields of Ancient Egypt.

Wordmark

The font used for the logo complements the brand's personality of being friendly, playful, and sustainable. Phenomena Bold, the font, is a modern sans serif font based on round geometric shapes. The rounded corners softens the overall proportions and supplements the geometric aesthetics of the family. The colors of the brand strays away from the usual green colors. Instead of green, the brand uses orange, which evokes energy and friendliness, and brown, which ties the brand to agriculture.

In order for the wordmark to harmonize well with the icon, I modified the thickness of the font to match the strokes of the icon. In order to make it seem more cohesive, I matched the counter of the ‘a’ with the seed like elements of the icon. I also made sure to modify the height of the h and y.

Refinement and Logo Construction

Hulya’s logo is a monoline logo. In order to keep the logo looking consistent, clear, and legible in different context and applications. It’s necessary to refine the logo both optically and mathematically.

Patterns and Illustrations

The icons and illustrations used must also be in line with the monoline style of the logo. Typically, the icons must also contain elements from the logo. Due to the logo’s versatility and flexibility, it’s very easy to create icons using parts of the logo.

Business card based on the Nutritional Facts layout. To further emphasize Hulya's focus on health and wellbeing.

The first step to encouraging people to live a healthier and more sustainable lifestyle is through education and awareness. This can be achieved by giving its customers an efficient and informative shopping experience.

For easy identification, the products will be labelled and color coded. The label will also contain at most 3 health benefits in order to encourage the customers to buy these products, and hopefully grow their own.