Creating a Perfectly On Trend, Yet Timeless Brand

Fox and Clover is a lifestyle brand created by Tara Dowling to celebrate and inspire girl bosses, creatives, and entrepreneurs. From the very beginning, we loved the brand’s energy—fun, femme and modern, it’s bursting with a feel-good spirit that embraces thinking big and having lots of heart.

Though she’d been selling her original designs of mugs, apparel, totes and gifts under Fox and Clover for some time, Tara knew it was time to rebrand and create an identity that truly encompassed her values. She’d also been struggling with creating a brand that worked across all aspects of her business: not just online or on her site, but as a cohesive experience that charmed customers from the moment they landed on her site to when they received and opened their order.

“Right now, my wholesale orders are fairly unbranded because I’ve been struggling with packaging design. I want to keep what is good and expand on that. Packaging has been a huge pain point for me and I think nailing down the brand identity with you is going to help tremendously!”

One thing that stood out to our designer, Sarah, about Tara’s brand immediately was the quality of her original designs: she has a knack for giving trends a unique touch, constantly reinterpreting them to truly make them her own. Sarah wanted to tap into this quality by creating a unique, timeless brand identity that lives on, instead of seeming outdated when people’s tastes move on.

“Sayings, animals, colours, even typography – these all change yearly in a HUGE way so we need to make sure the new brand can roll with whatever 2017, 2018, 2019 and beyond could potentially throw at us!”

Before Sarah got to work on initial logo concepts, Tara mentioned her affinity for mixing fonts, like a hand-lettered script with a more modern, bold font. They also discussed the possibility of a geometric icon to represent Fox and Clover:

Beautiful, right?

LOTS of people seem to agree. When Sarah did a quick Google search, she found it everywhere. “It’s copied LOADS of times in brands and tattoo designs and illustrations all over the internet, so scratch that! We’re unique!!”

Taking inspiration from a four leaf clover and a fox face (both of which share similar heart shapes) Sarah came up with the winning design:

“This fox head flips around and forms a perfect clover shape, and with the awesome geometric facets to the design it ends up looking like it’s made of crystal, which will look SO SUPER AWESOME later on once we start print work and inevitably print that little fella in rose gold foil! … It works in a number of ways, we can take the facets out and the clover becomes a simple, geometric clover which I really love as well – AND I might add, might just be the only one of its kind on the internet. I couldn’t find ANY geometric designs of lucky clovers!”

Tara was so excited with the new icon, she wished should stamp it on everything she owns! Combined with her remaining graphical elements, a new tagline we developed for the brand, and print/packaging design, the new Fox and Clover identity began to take shape in iconic, timeless fashion:

We especially loved creating the design treatment for the Core Values behind Fox and Clover, which align perfectly with our own philosophies here at Aeolidia. In fact, Tara and Sarah were so in sync, the project was completed a month ahead of schedule.

Tara told us,

Aeolidia was a dream to work with from beginning to end. They are extremely organized and efficient which makes the entire process go very smoothly. Natalia, their copywriter, is talented, kind and brought lots of amazing ideas to the table. For my brand identity, I worked with Sarah who is so warm, fun and lovely – such a treat to work with. Sarah nailed my vision for the brand identity and I’m so pleased with how everything turned out. I can’t wait to work with the team again for a web design sometime down the road!

See this project in our portfolio.

Using your brand graphics on print and web projects

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