There are those businesses that start off with a super strong plan and branding that’s been locked in from day one. Then there’s Wooly Doodle. One of the things that keeps me up at night is the fact we’ve been suffering from a bit of a brand identity crisis pretty much since day one. Over the next couple months, you’re going to see the brand evolve even more and I wanted to take a look back at where it all started.
For about five minutes, Wooly Doodle was a knitting company and within those five minutes, I had a lovely designer work on some logos and brand standards for me. Here is our original logo that I still love today even though it has absolutely zero relevancy to the business anymore lol.
After those five minutes were up and I made the decision to transition to sewing, I was too embarrassed to ask for another logo to be made and so I just made my own using the same overall fonts, colours and brand guidelines, keeping some of the alternate logos the designer had made for me – that’s where the WD logo on our signature cuff/side tags originate from.
The logos above have been in rotation in some way, shape or form (and in several iterations of garment tags) for almost all of Wooly Doodle's little life and, while I always enjoyed the playfulness of the font and the 'in your face' this sh*t is made in Canada aspects of these logos, they just didn't feel right when the Lounge Line began to emerge.
At the time I announced there would be a Lounge Line, I was really excited about the idea of a new creative outlet that truly captured the essence of what the Wooly Doodle brand had become. I decided to say farewell to our original font and bring in something more clean, modern and adult. Given that the Lounge Line was largely based on monochrome shades, I also dropped our signature mint colour (or #9DC9BC, as I've come to know).
In January of this year, the Lounge Line officially was re-named [LOUNJ] and if you want to learn more about why, you can read this post. I had also created a separate set of print and marketing collateral under this new sub-brand full of puns, witty captions and more sleek design because all those things are my jam. I created updated content tags for our [LOUNJ] garments and you may have noticed that the Lounge Line look and feel has been dominating the IG game lately. The more I posted and the more I created for [LOUNJ], the more the branding felt like me and the original Wooly Doodle branding felt like the me of yesteryear. And so it came time to really think about where to take things and how to bring all the Wooly Doodle products together under one cohesive brand.
Moving forward, I'm going to be gradually phasing out all our old tags (read: I'm too broke to just throw them away and start fresh) and replacing them with our new logos and wordmarks. And, moving forward our products will be divided into two distinct pillars:
1. Wooly Doodle seasonal which will include both kids and adult seasonal items (both solids and prints) that will vary in style and fabric based on the time of year.
2. Wooly Doodle [LOUNJ] which will be our year-round line of items that are light and cozy enough to sleep in if ya want to!
So here you have our new branding. The most prominent piece of branding to-date has been our cuff tag and so I wanted to keep the double dye-line as a constant as I evolved our logos/wordmarks. Each one features our new font and has a very simple, modern look that works for all ages.. at least this is what I tell myself because I couldn't afford to pay someone to make these for me and had to do it myself #sorrynotsorry.
All jokes aside, my hope is that over the next couple of months I will have achieved my main goal which is to establish a consistent look and feel across all our products. I want the Wooly Doodle brand to be fun, cheeky and modern and also appropriate for babes, moms, dads and everyone in between.
One of my absolute favourite parts of running this business is the ability to be creative and I hope that comes across in every brand touchpoint. I'll be working hard over the next while to continue to overhaul all our collateral and packaging but here is a sneak peek at what you can expect.
What do you think? What do you love most about the Wooly Doodle brand so I can make sure to keep it coming for ya?