The Brief
Children’s Book Illustration mainly only attracted collectors. They wanted to open-up their audience to other clients. Knowing your audience is key to branding, so we worked with them to identify a range of potential new customers and reasons to buy – as unique gifts for a new baby, or decoration for nursery, or just for those people would like to own part of their childhood for nostalgia or sentimental reasons.
We worked with CBI to rebrand and relaunch a new website.
Branding that's Serious Fun
CBI are knowledgable but not preachy or pretentious – they love children’s books and their enthusiasm is infectious. They do take their responsibility seriously, but there’s pure joy in what they do.
Similarly, owning any original artwork should bring joy. Owning original artwork from children’s books is whimsical, nostalgic, and (apart from the knowledge you now own the one-and-only original copy of something) it’s not something that needs to be taken too seriously.
So the brand should reflect that sense of fun & joy, while retaining the professionalism necessary to ensure people take it seriously.
Confident enough not to need attention
The artwork should be what people see, not the branding, so we made the branding more of a motif that could be used to watermark, or simply to dress. We believe brand guidelines should be handrails, not handcuffs so we kept the brand design simple, but strong, but with very few constraints to give future designers freedom to have fun with it. We filled the guidelines with examples, including showcasing the artwork in domestic settings to appeal to consumers, and taking quotes from children’s books and applying them to corporate presentations to inspire cheekyness.
The result was a simple motif that could be repeated and played with, and a larger logotype of the name, to use more sparingly when establishing the brand.
CBI Branding
Children’s Book Illustration is the name of a gallery that sells original artwork that has been published in children’s books. The original artworks are, surprisingly, not that expensive but they mainly only attracted collectors. They wanted to open-up their audience to other clients – as gifts for a new baby, or decoration for nursery, or just for those people would like to own part of their childhood.