Tomilola Adefioye: Collaboration Project: Branding

Urban Street Food Branding

Aim : to explore and develop an understanding of identity design/branding.

I began this project by thinking about the type of food I would like to brand. After much thought I settled on Mexican food. I decided to rebrand Mexican food as it loved by many including myself. The downfall of it and the reason for my wanting to rebrand it is because of it's aesthetic which is quite tacky, cheesy and very unoriginal and watered down in non-Mexican countries. I intend to brand Mexican food based on three values: traditional, authentic and homemade. I decided to call my street food brand 'Viejo' which is spanish for old. I found this appropriate as it is a refection of my brand expression and aim which is to bring the Old Mexico to the streets of London.

The branding workshop enabled me to realise that my starting point should have been on doing research into branding itself rather than jumping straight into looking at my own brand. Analysing Oliver Bonas as a brand highlighted the importance of a brand having an identity/ personality and being more than a logo.

I found the Pop Art exhibition at the Barbican interesting as I gathered a better understanding of the concepts and purpose behind Pop Art. However, as I explored the exhibition space I started to feel the work wasn't directly relevant to my project until I saw samples of Mexican typography for a restaurant mural by Alexander Girard which really caught my eye and inspired my final logo in terms of typography and colour ways.

Fig.1 Pop Art Exhibition poster (http://blog.solopress.com, 2013)

Visiting White cross street market was an insightful experience as I interacted with the visuals, branding etc with creating my own brand in mind which enabled me to be more critical as well as notice certain essential features I needed to consider for my brand. Fortunately, there was a Mexican food stall which allowed me to experience an example of Mexican branding. The most important thing I noted from this experience was the lack of branding and care with the packaging. My burrito was wrapped in tin foil which I understand was due to practical reasons but I felt this was inadequate.

Fig.2 Mexican street food stand (authors own, 2013)

Fig.3 Luardos logo (authors own, 2013)

Fig.4 Luardos menu (authors own, 2013)

Fig.5 My Burrito from Luardos (authors own, 2013)

In terms of my logo, I wanted it to be distinct yet have a Mexican feel to it in order for it to reflect my brand's personality therefore after extensive experimentation I decided to use a pastel pink and green. The intention behind this was to echo the colours featured in the Mexican flag, red and green as they are also tones which connote flavour. In addition to this they are bright yet subtle colour ways. In terms of my brand describing what "Viejo' (old) means I decided to incorporate a feel of rustic, old to reflect the worn out yet still beautiful which I feel captures the Mexico I want to portray.

Overall, I think I accomplished the aim to 'explore and develop and understanding of identity/branding'. The most difficult aspect of this week for me was my time management as I struggled to structure my ideas and develop them accordingly which led to me going back and forth to re address some issues. In terms of how successful Viejo is as a brand I think it is quite successful and could work as an urban street food brand because Viejo is more than a logo. It is a brand as it works in each application, it's personality also reflects through the use of a symbol as a secondary branding tool. If I could change anything about my outcome in terms of the approach I took I would consider using an existing typeface for the name 'Viejo' alongside the pattern/ symbol as that may have worked better than hand drawn typography.

Final outcomes