top of page

Kulshe Logo

GRAPHIC DESIGN / FREELANCE PROJECT

I was approached to create a logo design for an artisanal caramel-making business called Kulshe. The family had been making these caramels for multiple generations in a town north of Santiago, Chile, and were now looking to make the business more official and modern with a logo and branding.

The brief was to create a custom logo that emulated the style and sophistication of traditional candy and chocolate brands, ideally while also incorporating some reference to the characteristic shape and colors of their caramels. The client shared with me a variety of images to use as inspiration, as well as some previous attempts to create a logo that they hadn’t liked.

Process

RESEARCH

I started by studying the logos and imagery shared with me as inspiration, and did a bit of additional research on candy logos, particularly smaller artisanal companies like Kulshe. I also looked for typefaces that could work for this logo.

Kulshe-logo-01.jpg
IDEATION

With my research done it was time to start sketching. This went from loose exploratory sketches playing with the letters and possible imagery, to using an iPad to draw on top of typefaces and develop some of the sketches I liked best. At this stage I worked in black only and didn’t worry about colors, in order to develop a strong silhouette for the logo.

Kulshe-logo-02.jpg
DECISION-MAKING

After refining the best concepts, I consulted with the client to see which they liked best. They selected their top choices and gave me some feedback on changes they’d like to see. In particular they leaned towards the versions with a visual reference or icon of the caramel, so I further developed those designs. We went back-and-forth three times, refining the concepts for the logo and adding in some color options along the way before a final direction was chosen.

Kulshe-logo-03.jpg
CREATION

As we went through rounds of edits, the logo designs moved from sketches on my iPad to vector designs in Illustrator, though still not perfectly precise finished products. After the final logo choice was made, I worked to carefully clean up the hand-lettered typeforms and create some final color options based on the client’s preferences.

Kulshe-logo-04.jpg
FINAL REVISION

Once the logo was finished and last comments made, I created versions of the logo in color, white, and black, as well as variations with and without the additional text to the right. These were all exported as separate AI, EPS, and PNG files to share with the client as the final product.

Kulshe-logo-05.jpg

Solution

In the end, the client chose a hand-lettered script logo with a drawing of the caramel. The icon of the caramel itself hits a sweet spot between abstract and overly literal, and the lettering lends an elegant but still modern feel to the brand. The brown and gold colors merge the tones of the candies with a sophisticated sheen, and the alternate versions work well without color in instances where high contrast or black-and-white printing is necessary.

bottom of page