Breanna Kerr - Crooners

Website

Keeping the Classics Alive and Well: A Small Vinyl business Case Study

Project Introduction

Wondering how I envisioned the brand Crooners? I was tasked with creating a visual brand identity for a small business. I wanted to take a meaningful approach to this project and thought about something that holds great importance to me.

Crooners is a vinyl and apparel small business I created, and it has a very sentimental background. My Pop and I would always listen to Crooners—pop idols from “back in the day”, and by back in the day we mean from the early 1930s to the early 1960s. Because of my Pop, I have developed a great appreciation and love for crooner artists and songs, especially Dean Martin.

How lucky can one gal be? I immediately had a direction in mind for this small business. Crooners are the past, present, and future. The music remains classic, so much that even youths today are inspired by these artists’ sounds.

After my brand’s personality was defined, I set off to create cohesive deliverables and successful digital marketing. The brand's design system was inspired by the past and designed with the present in mind, as a mission of mine was to connect older and younger generations that share a bond over and love for the genre. Another primary goal, however, was to make a comprehensive branding campaign.

Challenges

My main challenge was to create a visual identity that appeals to the sound and feel of the music and its defined listeners, which includes connecting older folks to the new through the business’s design system and decisions. Other challenges:

- Create a cohesive design system and use it to produce digital marketing and comprehensive deliverables.

- Capture the theme of an older and smoother vintage style, but also give a contemporary, bold, and energetic feel to its aesthetic.

- Make decisions based on Crooner’s descriptive words, such as suave, silky, smooth, and jazzy.

Deliverables

- Logo & Responsive Logo

- Trifold Brochure

- Website

- Responsive Mobile Site

- HTML Email

- Social Media Banner

- Apparel Designs

- Series of 4 Posters

Outcomes

- A small business with a comprehensive and compelling visual brand identity, where customers interact with the brand to view vinyl collections and apparel of their favorite crooner.

- Visual designs that are relevant to the audience, as it appeals to both younger and older generations interested in the energetic, yet romantic style.

- The brand's success in its colors, image style, typographic choices, and system marks.

- Through the defined personality, a set of deliverables were created and connected, as all present as one brand.

- Overall learnings included how to define a brand, create a cohesive and appealing design system, and apply it to a series of applications.