Isáa is a cosmetics brand based in Haina, a small island in British Columbia, Canada. The brand aims at creating high-end products made only from natural resources locally harvested on the island. Isáa's visual identity was inspired by mushrooms that grow abundantly on the island, called Trametes Versicolor. These mushrooms are used as the root ingredient of the brand's cosmetics, as well as to produce the paper used for the secondary packaging.
ISÁA
The typeface used in Isáa's logotype is custom-made. The letters had to match the organic, soft shapes of the mushrooms. The initial stages of sketching show an exploration of different characteristics that allowed me to define the appropriate recipe for the final typeface.
Project Assignment:
Project Assignment:
Prototyping & Production
MS. in Packaging Design
Pratt Institute (Spring 2019)
Discipline:
Naming & Branding
Type Design
Packaging design
Tools:
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Pastel color pencils
The name Isáa was created as a result of deep research and exploration of Haida, the native language of Haina. Haida is written with Latin letters combined with accents above some vowels and bars under some consonants.
I studied the length and complexity of various words, the most likely succession and pairing of letters, the ratio of consonants to vowels, and the abundance of duplicated letters per word. I then proceeded by generating numerous random combinations of these letters, while applying the rules I had withdrawn from my research.
As for the graphics exploration of Isáa's visual identity, I gathered many highly detailed pictures of Trametes Versicolor mushrooms and created a visual guide that would help the consumer identify the color range of each product before getting a closer look and reading the information written on the packaging. Instead of working directly with the photographs collected during my research process, I made handmade blown-up drawings of Trametes Versicolor mushrooms with pastel color pencils.