Several years ago I set myself the challenge of branding & redesigning the Icelandic lifestyle blog ‘home & delicious’. I was new to design at the time and was eager to push myself. I had come across this inspirational blog before and loved their style and the range of topics they spoke about.
I set about exploring routes of design that I felt encapsulated the blog and the family behind it. I remember sketching out rustic hand lettered logos, filling pages with monograms, illustrated whales & Icelandic flags and creating mood boards of colourful Reykjavik houses & sleek Scandinavian interiors. I did all of this before I got distracted by life and other projects came along.
It wasn’t until a couple years later that I came across the blog again. It’s minimalist class re ignited my curiousity to put my design abilities to work. This time round I came to the project with fresh eyes and with a desire to, not just create a beautiful brand that stood true to the blog’s ethos but also, delve deep into the user experience and interface of their main platform – homeanddelicious.is
Home & Delicious is a place for thoughts on home, food and ‘interior & living design’. Because of this the branding needed to be adaptable to involve all of these interests. I set to work developing a modular brand – built from illustrated blocks that could be combined to create an adaptive logo for the blog. A logo that could appear in multiple forms and different situations, yet still be relevant and retain a strong recognisable brand presence.
After a short period of experimentation, I settled on the illustration style and colour palette that fit my vision perfectly. Next I began the lengthy task of illustrating houses, homes, lamps and larders; baths, beds, stairs and succulents. Each illustrated block fitting into one of the 5 categories that would be featured on the Home & Delicious site.
Years after this project began, I now had a strong brand and type style, as well as a clear vision on how the blog functioned. I finally turned my attention to the design of their website. One thing I was keen to achieve was to improve the usability of the site for its readers. The first step – introducing a clear navigation system with a new set of consistent categories, that allowed the reader to filter the blog articles by their interest. The design progressed rapidly and before I knew it I had designed layouts for the majority of pages.
I had accomplished what I had set out to achieve all those years ago, and it’s a great feeling! It’s very easy to get distracted from projects that you set yourself, projects with no clients and no deadlines. But it’s a project that I learnt a lot from, and one I’m very proud of. From the Junior Designer starting out on a new career, to the Senior Creative I am today, it is a project that has grown with me, and reminds me how I have progressed over the years.
