Garcia Evergreens
Project Overview
Garcia Evergreens is a small family-owned business specializing in the harvesting of decorative greens for the creation of wreaths and other festive incorporations. Garcia Evergreens serves an international market in which they aspire to be more competitive through a total business rebrand. Due to the scope of this project, we teamed up with another creative professional to rebrand Garcia Evergreens while also creating a new international brand - Cougar Mountain.
We were responsible for designing the global Cougar Mountain brand for Garcia Evergreens. We also assisted in the development of the Garcia Evergreens rebrand itself. Together, we were able to revitalize the brand, transforming a trusted brand into an iconic one, setting up the potential for a competitive e-commerce expansion in the near future.
Services
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Branding
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UX Strategy
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Package Design
The Process
Overview
The process for this project was informed by the branding goals Garcia Evergreens set forth, namely, exploring how they can transform their business brand into one that increases their competitive advantage in a saturating marketplace. The two main objectives included a complete rebrand of Garcia Evergreens and designing a new brand for their international market.
To accomplish this, we explored how other business brands successfully competed in the decorative floral industry and how Garcia Evergreens could convey their high-quality products to an international audience. These are the six milestones we set for the project:
Competitive Analysis
Working closely with our project team, we conducted a competitive analysis to understand how local competitors were engaging with their customers. We identified whether each local business was a direct or indirect competitor, who their target audience is, the quality of their website, and overall marketing strategies. We worked to determine how Garcia Evergreens could exceed the competition's digital reach and open its high-quality products to more customers.
Concept Boards
We proceeded to work on concept boards that would inspire our designs. Garcia Evergreen's most sought after product is their high-quality Salal, which grows most beautifully in the Pacific Northwest. We decided to design their new brand around this product and its typical uses. We also explored how other brands incorporated various products under a single brand to determine whether this would be the appropriate strategy for the Garcia Evergreens and Cougar Mountain brands.
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Logo Iterations
After drawing inspiration from our concept boards, understanding the deep-rooted values of Garcia Evergreens, and considering the scope of their business, we began our logo design work. This design work included pages and pages of hand sketches, feedback sessions, and transforming those hand sketches into digital vector-based designs. At this point, it was time to narrow down the options to a few final designs.
Finalized Logos
Once we identified the best aspects of the top three logo designs, we moved forward to introduce our Cougar Mountain color palette to the logo. After several rounds of iteration and feedback from Garcia Evergreens stakeholders, we arrived at this final logo. We worked with our design team to also finalize the Garcia Evergreens color palette and iterate until we reached the final logo design.
Package Design
After finalizing the logos, typefaces, and color palettes of both Garcia Evergreens and Cougar Mountain, we proceeded to translate this design language to the salal product packages. We aspired to create iconic boxes that would allow customers to immediately recognize where the product originated while also conveying necessary transportation instructions.
Branding Guidelines
At this point, the majority of our work was completed, and as stated by Garcia Evergreens, it far exceeded the expectations of what their brand could become. To ensure the quality and consistency of the Cougar Mountain brand, we created the following branding guidelines. The guidelines specify the best practices for expressing the brand across a wide variety of mediums.
