EIRO Candles
Brand Identity & Strategy
The EIRO owner came to me looking for help building out a logo, brand identity, and brand strategy for her new candle company. The candle brand is a side project with her two daughters to help support the scholarship fund for cohorts, workshops, and retreats with her primary business of grief counseling and spiritual direction. She wanted the brand identity to stand on it’s own while remaining cohesive with the branding for the primary business.
Logo Process
The EIRO name is a mash up of the first letters of the owner’s daughter’s names and the heart behind the brand are words like rest, recovery, peace, connection, and wholeness. The candles are all hand made with the cleanest ingredients available in Colorado. She wanted something that was personable but not playful, and professional without being stuffy and exclusive.
She was pretty certain she wanted to go with a wordmark for the logo style so our first step was determining an overall feel for the type. She had not decided if she wanted to go more rustic and natural to fit the Colorado vibe, more clean and modern to emphasize her ingredients and process, or fully borrow from her other brand with a more traditional type style.
So, to help guide the process and set our foundation, I presented her with a basic wordmark in three styles to define what direction we would head with the rest of the brand’s visual identity and personality.
rustic & handmade
clean & modern
more traditional serif
During our review it was pretty clear that the more traditional type style not only connected to the owner’s primary brand better, but it left us more flexibility with how we could build out the full brand personality and visual identity. However, we also recognized that without adding some customization and distinguishing elements to the logo there was nothing to set it apart and make it memorable.
I began to experiment with how the text could be modified to set it apart by playing with the shapes, ligatures, and forms to add detail and help the logo stand out. Transitioning the “E” to a rounded form to match the “o” on the other side. Adjusting how the swash on the “R” interacted with the o. Finally I included a star to the center of the “O” and adjusting the shape of the top accent mark to give it a matching flow with the now rounded E and the R.
To continue to define the full brand identity we took what we had discussed and solidified during the logo designing process and started to give some clarity to the brand personality and voice. The packaging will lean heavily on high contrast black and white. Candle scents named to evoke feeling and place. While social media posts and advertising will lean more into a charming tone with a bite of wit. The voice is full of imagery and heavy use of metaphor to connect to their tagline of “Where warmth becomes wonder.” With the brand personality and voice defined we immediately started working on some foundational assets.
They needed a primary label template for their amber jars that complied with legal requirements for retail sale. We also designed multiple dust covers for their special edition candles that go into jars with a slightly different shape and diameter. In addition she was already producing her first special order candle that would be included in a package for her primary business. So, we developed a custom label and dust cover for those jars that used the brand font from that business instead of the EIRO branding. I also designed a series of social media posts for her to use as she released each of her signature scents. You can see photos of the various elements below:
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