“Overall, I would want my work to be known for four main things: simplicity, durability, charm, and craftsmanship. My goal is to create functional, captivating ceramic work that people love to both use and display in their homes.”
Features Overview
Amber Wallour of Chelonia Ceramics came to me for branding personality strategy during the early summer of 2017, looking for some polishing touches to lovingly adhere to her unique ceramics work. Based in eclectic Austin, Texas and handcrafting her work in the natural light of her ceramics studio, I couldn’t pass the opportunity to work with a client so bubbly, delightful, and skillful.
Chelonia is the scientific name for turtles—the idea behind it is that Amber makes organically formed vessels, kind of like turtles grow shells, and the whole process is slow and methodical. She loves the ideas associated with turtles: slow, careful movement, time, and persistence.
We landed on a personality for her brand: a charming inspirer, open-minded innovator, and a delightful adventurer.
There's a Map for That
Traits define the most descriptive adjectives of Chelonia Ceramics' human personality. They were prioritized and mapped based on their meaning, linked to archetype solutions, and organized into veins of personality which ultimately form the foundation for the brand’s story.
Starting with a list of personality attributes, I asked Amber to define her intentions for her Chelonia Ceramics brand, build a mission statement to better engage with a vision for that brand, and then to ask herself, “Does this attribute reflect my products, services, what I do, and how I want my audience to feel?" We then took the brand attributes she selected, and made an affinity grouping (or mapping) of the brand attributes underneath six categories:
- Emotional
- Functional
- Intellectual
- Symbolic
- Experiential
- Physical
We than began to deep-dive into with human personalities and social stereotypes that linked to those attributes. Will the brand be something artisan, or a leader, or a discoverer, or perhaps a defiant, carefree rebel? Careening between personality dichotomies, we explored narrative positioning to determine how Chelonia Ceramics' story is expressed today, and how it ought to be delivered.
A Clever Endeavor
We landed on a personality for her brand: a charming inspirer, open-minded innovator, and a delightful adventurer.
Charming Inspirer
Beautiful, inspiring, distinctive, empowering, classic, idealistic, polished, experiential, proud, enlightening, exclusive, aesthetic, elite
Open-Minded Innovator
Transformative, intelligent, established, empowering, visionary, competitive, stable, courageous, strong, innovative, entrepreneurial, leading-edge, prodigious, rigorous
Delightful Adventurer
Challenge-seeking, nonconforming, persuasive, spontaneous, high-spirited, courageous, bold, optimistic, energetic, clever, resilient, original, responsible, inventive
Set the Mood
After presenting a triage of moodboards to set the vibe, we explored what kind of visuals really baked the logo into the heart of a compelling brand. We needed the personality, behavior, and communication to shine through.
The Final Product
Out of numerous renderings, final logo mark is light-hearted and playful, yet casual and easygoing, providing a sense of calm. The high curve is simple and mirrors a turtle shell—slow and methodical, yet somewhere in there, there's this hidden imaginative and whimsical nature of the brand. With a stamp of the mark on the foot of the piece, everything came together.
