Branding Case Study: Cultivating Your Story

Everything we do at Rhema Design Co. is thoughtful, intentional, and rooted in strategy. We use the one concept method, and it only works because of the heavy focus on strategy at the beginning of a branding project. This branding case study will dive into that.

Today, I want to show you a little bit more of that intentionality by showing a branding case study.

I’ll be doing a deep dive into a recent branding project and dissecting the type, color, illustration, etc.

I’m not going to talk much about the process itself this post. In March I have an entire blog series that does a deep dive into my whole process. I’ll be sharing more about my process and even showing you my client presentations! Make sure to check back in March for my series on the branding process. But for now, let’s dive into this brand concept and the intentionality behind it.

For you to see that intentionality though, it’s important to highlight some information about this project.

All of these things (and more) are covered in the Brand Strategy portion of my process. These elements determine the visual direction of the brand.

Who They Are: Cultivating Your Story is a resource where women can learn how to share their story and create an online platform for telling their story. They believe women should have the opportunity to have a unique online presence even if they don’t have a large budget.

Brand Goal: Everything Cultivating Your Story does is with the goal of encouraging and empowering women to believe in themselves and the stories Christ has given them. Cultivating Your Story wants to foster a community where women are learning and growing together.

Cultivating Your Story wants to foster a community where women are learning and growing together.

Target Audience: Cultivating Your Story is for women between 25-35 who have a vision, heart, and a story to tell. She likely is a stay at home mom living in suburban America and is smart and willing to learn. She’s a dreamer, eager, and an achiever. She wants to make a difference by telling her story, but doesn’t know where to start. That’s where Cultivating Your Story comes in.

Set Apart: The heart of CYS is to help women learn to tell their story well and you provide them with the education, resources, and a beautiful site to make that possible. They are able to speak on this because the founder, Amy led the way. Cultivating Your Story cares more about the women themselves than the income potential they represent.

Tone: Powerful, feminine, long lasting, beautiful

The tone of the Cultivating Your Story brand is powerful, feminine, long lasting, and beautiful.

*These are just a few of the aspects we cover during the strategy process.

Like mentioned above in the target audience section, Cultivating Your Story targets women who want to tell their story, but don’t know how. For that reason, the brand needed to be friendly, down to earth, and welcoming to appeal to these women.

Type: The type for the brand is a classic serif font, paired with a hand lettered font in some instances. It was important to balance the expertise that Cultivating Your Story provides with the difficult parts of telling a story. The expertise is shown in the serif font and the difficulty is represented through an organic hand lettered font.

Color: We went with a warm and earthy color palette, but one that is still feminine. Garden imagery is used throughout the brand, so we pulled in colors that you may see in a typical garden or outdoors. The overall feel is warm and inviting.

The color palette for this branding case study is warm and earthy, but still feminine.

Pattern / Illustration: A cultivator is a gardening tool, so we chose to use that imagery throughout the brand. The hand drawn cultivator icon is used in some of the logo marks as well as in the brand pattern. An additional pattern was created using floral imagery.

These friendly and feminine elements appeal to the target audience.

Behind the Logo Mark: Cultivating Your Story’s primary mark is made up of a classic serif type, paired with fun and organic illustration and hand lettering. The serif type represents the expertise and quality that you provide, while the organic elements represent the nitty gritty parts of cultivating a story. The hand lettered element also provides a sense of ownership over the story. The slightly arched text represents the arc that every story has. The overall feeling of the mark is friendly and approachable, which will appeal to your target audience who may initially be intimidated by the idea of sharing their stories.

Overall Identity Rationale: The target audience, young mothers, has felt afraid or unequipped to tell their story for so long. They are attracted to the welcoming and friendly brand identity, crafted with them in mind. The style of the new identity reflects the stories CYS wants to help tell.

The brand design shown in this branding case study for Cultivating Your Story perfectly captures the intended tone and is welcoming to the target audience. Due to the heavy emphasis on strategy, the brand was approved with no revisions (the one concept methods works friends!).

It was an honor to work on this project, and it’s truly one of my favorites to date!

To view even more of the Cultivating Your Story brand, head over to my work page.