Gouda Girl Hummus
Bringing Retro Vibes to Local Health Food
Tools Used:
Illustrator, Photoshop
My sweet, visionary neighbor makes a mean hummus. Whether it's her creamy classic recipe, her novelty avohummus, or her chocolate-spiced variety, I am always enjoying the flavors she develops. She recently launched Gouda Girl (named after her family name — yes, it's jolly "Gouda" fun) to sell her small-batch specialty hummus to local San Diegans. I had the honor of developing her logo as well as some branded graphics to help her fun, sunny, retro style shine through in the Gouda Girl experience.
Inspiration
One of my favorite parts about branding for my neighbor was that it gave me an opportunity to translate her brilliant personal style into graphics. Her retro vibe and sunny personality are defining qualities I wanted to make sure came through in her logo. I looked to her baby blue VW bug, retro San Diego beach vibes, vintage ads from the seventies, and the vibrant colors of spices as inspiration.
Style Elements
For the retro look, I leaned heavily into vintage typography. Her logo was going to be used on lots of product labels, so I wanted the colors and type choices to be bold.
For typography, I picked two classic retro fonts as the key accents: Bookmania Black Italic (for its several flourished glyph options) and Cooper Std Black (for a fun but legible secondary style). For the larger bodies of text, I went with Futura PT Demi, which still leaned more retro but allowed for maximum legibility.
For color palettes, I drew directly from the ingredients of her product: chickpea yellows and creams, paprika oranges and reds, avocado greens, and cocoa powder brown. With her vibrant style, I went with a "more is more" approach in color, establishing several accents to allow each product variety to get its own micro-palette.
The Logo
It's funny to say, but the logo for this identity sort of came in a vision: it had to be a wordmark-based, in a seventies-inspired font, with an upwards slant. It was the first and last option for me to throw down on the artboard, as my neighbor saw it and immediately picked it before I could even think of other options! We landed on a multicolor version for her primary logo and an oval red one for the labels on her containers.
