I just love creating an awesome new brand for mission-driven businesses and Daphne & Friends was definitely a dream job to work on! It included all the things I adore; bold colours, playfulness and of course illustrations!
Poppy, owner of Daphne & Friends decided on a bespoke package that included all the brand basics as well as bespoke brand illustrations!
the mission-driven business
Daphne & friends CIC is focused on supporting families navigating parenting or pregnancy after the loss of a child, offering various free services aimed at bereaved parents. Another strand of Daphne & friends offers online baby loss awareness courses to those working in the pregnancy, baby and toddler industry.
Poppy wanted to take the current branding (or really a logo and colour palette) to the next level. The new brand look needed to look professional and create a welcoming, trustworthy environment for families.
As most start ups, the original logo and colour palette were DIY-ed in Canva - but Poppy realised that these were giving off the wrong feelings, didn’t look professional which in turn didn’t make her feel proud and confident of the amazing business she created.
The strategic brand identity Brief
We started by looking closely at Daphne & friends; what the values are, who the ideal customer is and what traits of Poppy’s personality we wanted to incorporate into her new brand look. And we came up with the following brief for the new brand identity:
The new brand design embodies the core values of community, inclusivity and warmth. It should convey a sense of being welcoming, friendly and supportive - like finding an old friend.
The design should distance itself from typical baby loss charities, focusing instead on celebration and growth, not grief.
The new brand identity needs to reflect Poppy’s ambition to grow and serve more families, expanding services and reach while retaining the personal, authentic and approachable nature that defines Poppy’s work.
The ideal visual identity will be bright, colourful and inviting, possibly with a touch of yellow (to refer to the flower Daphne) but avoiding traditional grief symbols like butterflies, feathers or robins.
The creative design process
From chatting to Poppy and looking at her Pinterest board I got a good creative direction as to what the new brand should look like.
I started by looking at different fonts that portrayed the right feeling - professional, fun, bold and family orientated. I played around with the idea that the ‘Daphne’ part of the logo was going to look bold and professional and the ‘& friends’ part to look fun and family orientated.
For the colour palette I looked at an array of colours and landed on a palette that was friendly, comforting, welcoming and healing.
Poppy opted to include illustration in her visual brand identity which is such a brilliant and perfect way to add more personality. From the start I had the idea that the illustrations should not be perfect but look more like shapes that were cut out by children.
Although Poppy had said she wanted to veer away from traditional grief symbols - I did want there to be a link to the symbols related to baby loss: a sun, a butterfly and a rainbow. These as well as other kid-like illustrations became the illustrations for Daphne & friends.
Last but not least I took a look at the typography - I stuck with the fonts from the logo for the header and display font. For the subheadings and body I choose a font that is clean and easy to read but had a softness to it with rounded edges.
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