MELOTERA PROCESS
My given prompt—"female outdoors box"—proved to be an interesting one, even at the beginning. I'm nowhere near a professional when it comes to camping and "roughing it" outdoors; plus, I am—in fact—not a female. With that said, this prompt proved to be one that would push me beyond myself and think from the perspective of others.
But first I had to figure out who those "others" were. Females, obviously, but how old are they? What do they like? Why would they want to go outside when the house is cozy AND comes with AC (usually)? These are the questions I thought through near the beginning, and I also took this time to look at my competition and see what's been done before, and what hasn't.
As I dug, I found that one niche seemed to stick out a bit as one that wasn't necessarily addressed anywhere else (at least, not in subscription box form). The idea of "glamping" (glamorous camping) arose—a newer form of camping where the rough aspects of being outdoors are eliminated in favor of using modern day conveniences and luxuries (while still looking enough like camping for it to sort of count).
While glamping may seem excessive and may minimize the "authentic" experience of camping, I felt that the whole idea of it could be applied to a more casual, beginner audience. For those who may be uneasy or even afraid to trek into the wilderness, perhaps this box could provide a bit of ease and reinforce the serenity that comes from being outdoors.
With the audience and goal in mind, I started to ponder the brand itself. I thought of words that describe the message I wanted to send, and I started playing Frankenstein with different words to try and find a sticky name. A few stuck out, but one in particular really struck me—a combination of Mellow, meaning calm, and Terra, meaning Earth. A simple combo, but effective in describing the desired message of presenting nature as this place of serenity and wellness.
As for a logo mark, my mind naturally revolved around animals—since, y'know, nature? The tortoise was particularly interesting to me, as it is known to embody peacefulness and endurance. Along with this, I found ways to draw out references to the earth through the wordmark. The L and O sort of lent themselves to a rising sun, and the A could easily be seen as mountain-y.
Alongside the visual brand language, I thought about what the design of the box could be and what items it could include. During the conception of this project, it was autumn, so my mind was definitely focused on hot chocolate and sweaters—comforting things. As for the "box," I actually pondered a cylindrical capsule design—one that could serve as a visual reference to a duffel bag.
ROUND ONE
The initial design utilized some icons to drive the theme and used the geometric shapes that were starting to subtly come through in the logo (triangles and circles). However, they were all lacking in visual unity, and the same could be said for the logo and wordmark. Things just weren't meshing at this stage, and some outside counsel mentioned the concern that the tortoise mark could be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Despite all the concepts seeming good on paper, the execution was still far from being complete.
With this in mind, I pushed forward, and dug deep. I needed to try and really work out the relationships between the letters of the wordmark. As you'll see below, I tried to leave no stone unturned—so to speak—when working out a solution.
So, yeah, it took a while. But the resulting wordmark proved to be worth the hassle. With its geometric and ever-so-slightly rounded corners, the Melotera wordmark gives an aura of comfort and calm. Additionally, the relationship between the L and O became a sort of representation of progress, or perhaps, more abstractly, the sun setting over the land. Similarly, the A forms an abstract mountain, combining this with the O creates a sun+mountain combination logo mark—allowing the logo and wordmark to work separately in different contexts.
ITEMS
In the meantime, I needed to start conceptualizing the items that would actually be featured in the capsule. My brain was still in autumn mode, so I got specific with the list of includes, and started sketching the items more thoroughly before heading to the computer to make some mockups.
ROUND TWO
With refined logos, I rethought the look of the capsule and made some initial designs for the products that could be included within the box. The new capsule would feature icons that actually corelated to the items housed inside. The results were good, but were admittedly still lacking in certain areas.
The main things holding the designs back were mainly composition and color related. At this point, I was using all eight colors I’d chosen during the development process, and as a result, the products weren’t really meshing together in the way I’d hoped.
Additionally, the motif of the pointed triangle shape and circles was fine on paper, but the over-inclusion of it ended up being a distraction and detracting from the overall compositions. They felt a bit too tribal—as opposed to natural.
Though the main logo and wordmark worked fine, the emblem (seen on the box and sweater), wasn’t quite solved yet, and didn’t interact well with the elements around it. The icons on the capsule itself and the back of the matchbox left a lot to be desired as well.
Overall, a decent first round, but still many things to improve on. So naturally, the next step was to improve on those “many things”—the first thing being the emblem.
The refining of the emblem involved a lot of trial and error and a lot of playing with shapes, specifically, circles and triangles—the two main shapes from the main wordmark and logo. After some thorough experimentation, I was able to polish the emblem to be as simple and solid as possible.
During this time, I also changed the tagline from Great Outdoors—a generic at-best slogan—to It’s Great Outdoors—a sort of neat double entendre that refers to the classic nickname for nature as well as literally saying “it is great outdoors.” That sentence is, in a nutshell, the kind of positive attitude I wanted the brand to exude.
ROUND THREE
After a good helping of edits, refinements, peer reviews, and extremely late nights, I was able to pull everything together and create the Melotera Autumn 2021 Capsule. The idea of limiting the color palette to reflect the season really did help to make everything mesh, and the simplification of many compositional elements made it all click together.
The capsule itself kept many of the same elements, just arranged differently. The tan and brown were reversed, the icons shrunk down to a reasonable size, and the newly refined logos helped to tie it all together.
The sweater and beanie were given a big color adjustment, as well as a second option entirely—just red. This was done to add to the curated nature of Melotera as a service. Based on the user’s preference, they may opt for a more simple/subtle option for clothing.
Another big change overall was the implementation of the icons from the capsule. Any item in the bag with external packaging has an icon to visually represent it and makes the whole thing work as a kind of abstract way-finding system.
Another factor I kept in mind while recreating the packaging was proportions and how to maintain consistency with sizing. During my time as an intern the summer prior to this project, I learned the method of using the logo as a measuring tool for different elements on a package, so I did my best to adopt that technique for this project.
The rest of the items followed suit with the changes I’ve discussed. Updated icons, colors, and compositions made for a much more cohesive design language.
Additionally, the bottle had a ceramic texture added to it, and the Making Safe Campfires diagram on the back of the matchbox was heavily refined and simplified.
WEB
Of course, since the main concept of this brand was the subscription box, it goes without saying that a website would be needed (so people could actually order it). So I began sketching and trying to visualize what the simplest path for the user to take would be.
It didn’t take too long until I was taking the ideas to the computer. The design elements of the website pretty much created themselves at this point, but there was one crucial element that hadn’t popped up until now: photography.
In order for the website to not feel cold, I felt that photography of my target audience—outdoor women—would be quite necessary. I managed to find a decent amount of images from sources online, but there were also some niches that needed to be filled—namely, the main landing page. And what better way to get something done than to do it yourself?
Now, I’ll be the first to admit, I am not a master of photography—especially digital photography. However, I grabbed my girlfriend’s (now wife’s :) ) camera and put my shooting/editing skills to the test. The first photo below features my wife on top of Mt. Sassafras (on the border of the Carolinas). Unfortunately, it was in the dead of winter, and didn’t look much like autumn, so after a heavy amount of editing, the end result on the right was made.
Despite the slight otherworldly vibe in this image, I felt it was more than solid, and served as an appropriate landing page image. The other images on the website needed slight tweaks as well, but nothing too drastic. Just some simple color changes to fit more in line with the Melotera standards.
With the photography done, the website came together. It features a main landing page, calling out the benefits of the service, as well as a survey page were the user can find the sort of capsule that fits them best.
*Disclaimer: this website doesn’t actually exist, it’s just a prototype. Maybe someday though.
BRAND STANDARDS
After all these elements had been created, the final thing I wanted to create was a brand standards manual. It would serve as a final say on the decisions made for the Melotera brand and as a sort of compilation of every concept, element, and item that was conjured during this convoluted learning process. So, if you have the time/interest, I’d really appreciate you checking out the brand standards manual below.
THANKS FOR READING
Seriously, I appreciate it. This is definitely a condensed highlight reel of the process, but I hope you were entertained nonetheless! To read more about the final designs, head back to the main project page.