Project Snippet - Wild Wild Wings Brand Exploration

At Nextbite, the creative team helped bring to life, and inject new life, into many of the virtual kitchen concepts that the start-up owned. One such concept was Wild Wild Wings. They already had a logo (which you can see here), but it was (and still is) boring and expected in the space. One internal branding exercise we did was to re-brand Wild Wild Wings, and create something that spoke to the deliciousness of the offering, while also creating excitement digitally when no brick-and-mortar experience existed.

Below are three brand concepts that I created. Ultimately, a rebrand for Wild Wild Wings didn’t go through, but it’s fun to look back on what could have been right?

Concept 1

This simple logotype encapsulates the idea of mix-and-match; plain, legible type mixed with heatwave inspired text that could be arranged in a number of ways echoes Wild Wild Wings customization offering. Saucy brushstrokes contrast with the clean edges of the type, and mirror the appetite appeal of the offering. Yellows, oranges and reds make up the lion’s share of wing-brand color palettes, so I wanted to create something that introduced an unexpected, contrasting and attention-grabbing teal.

Concept 2

Skewing into more familiar territory, this direction relies on a classic color palette and visual cues to feel sporty and approachable. Saucy typography, textures and platters feels appetizing and relates to the product. Contrasting that with silouetted and playful imagery, this direction feels fresh, new and exciting.

Concept 3

For this direction, I was struck by how the sauce colors, mixed with the off-white of ranch and bright pop of celery green, felt very retro and psychedelic to me. I decided to make a pattern with these colors, mixing them all together as sauces do at the bottom of a plate of wings. To contrast this swirly, funky pattern, I created a custom funky but hard-edged geometric logotype. The shapes of the letters could also be used as masks for imagery, creating a stable, architectural grounding against the melting pattern.

Project Snippet - Crack't Breakfast Sandwiches Visual Identity Exploration

During my time at Nextbite, I had the opportunity to develop visual identities for a slew of their virtual kitchen brands. Crack’t is one such brand, and like it’s sister brand Hatch House, focused on the delivery of breakfast sandwiches. While Hatfch House took a more classic approach to their offering, Crack’t was decidedly more experimental and whimsical, offering items like a chicken and waffles sandwich.

This visual identity exploration for Crack’t feeds off that playful energy, turning a retro script typeface into eggs and bacon. A cracked egg is used as the apostrophe, and an illustration system inspired by the logo is used across merch and packaging. The whole thing is tied together with a sunny and funky color palette.

Project Snippet - NextBite Brand Exploration

Nextbite is a tech company that creates and licenses virtual kitchen brands to brick-and-morter restaurants to increase their third-party delivery revenue. In laymen’s terms; they create ghost kitchens. During my tenure at Nextbite, the creative team was tasked with evolving the brand, developing a new visual identity system that appealed both to restaurant owners and their consumers alike. Below are some of my creative exercises for this project.

I decided to evolve Nextbite’s original orange to be brighter and more appetizing. Instead of the original geometric sans-serif, I instead played with different weights of a slab serif for the logotype. This style of typography is noticeably absent among tech companies, and feels warmer and more human-centered than other tech companies in the virtual kitchen space. Combining different weights of the same font family speaks to the different virtual kitchen brands living under the Nextbite brand; many different pieces coming together to create a larger whole.

Expanding on the system included developing a tagline lockup, an avatar, colors, and illustrations. The avatar features a fun, cartoonish mouth. The colors were selected to create a limited, but flexible, palette. I focused on colors that bring energy and appetite appeal to illustrations and brand touchpoints. The illustrations are highly stylized, borrowing visual queues from the rounded soft serifs of the logotype. Playful and friendly, the illustrations speak to the breadth of cuisines found under Nextbite’s parent brand, uniting them under one stylistic umbrella.

Project Snippet - Hope Road Cafe

At Nextbite, we often partnered with other restaurant companies to help them break into the virtual kitchen space. As part of the pitch process for these potential partnerships, part of my role was exploring what that partnership could look like as a virtual kitchen brand. One such potential partnership was with the Bob Marley House. Below are is a visual exploration for Hope Road Cafe, a concept for a bowl-based virtual kitchen.

Project Snippet - Bad Beaches Only

Summer time means one thing; crushing cold ones on the beach. While I don’t have the ability for a summer Florida getaway this year; I can live vicariously through Bad Beaches Only. BBO is a Summertime Lager, the fourth edition made in collaboration with Bottleshare, an Atlanta-based nonprofit helping those in the beverage industry through times of crisis.

Being in North Georgia, most people go to Florida, the Georgia coast, or the Carolinas for their summer vacations. I have fond memories of growing up and going to the beach in South Florida, watching planes slowly passing over the water with banners waving behind them. It was always a treat to get the skywriters, planes that would use water vapor to write out messages in the sky. The design for Bad Beaches Only was inspired by those memories, featuring the beer name in hand-lettered clouds inspired by skywriting. Turning the can reveals the pilot, adding surprise and delight as the customer interacts with the packaging. I couldn’t decide if I liked the daytime or sunset sky best, so I’ve decided to show both.