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Artistic yet impossible logo
This is a picture of an etching from 1590’s. It’s a woman wearing a skirt covered with all things having to do with pastry making. Oh how the French romanticized everything perfectly. I wanted to use this image as our logo and did for awhile, but eventually we needed a better way to identify ourselves in a bolder, clearer way.
After many of my own uninspired attempts at creating a logo, I met Lauren Hayes. I had never hired a professional before to design anything. She was a graphic designer and we talked and talked about the vision I had in mind . We wanted to project that our products were hand made original recipes finished with artistry, and our emphasis at the time was all about cakes. The logo needed to be original and eye catching , easy to read and tell our story at a glance. Lauren went to work and came back with pages of ideas. It was so exciting at first, but then the work of actually making a decision began. I didn’t realize the smallest changes could make such a difference, but they did and we mulled and mulled over everything. Lauren was patient and very creative and eventually came back with what has basically remained our logo ever since. The solution came by means of her adept use of a Chinese ink brush that brought our vision into focus. In the beginning it also included a cake dangling at the bottom of our name. We MADE CAKES it clearly stated. Our name gave homage to the French for their culinary inspiration and Lauren's logo design affirmed a projection of our vision to be creative in all aspects of our endeavor.
As time went by we started to use our new logo on everything. The very thing we loved about it often created unanticipated challenges. It could never be aligned to be straight across. It was a one of a kind free form shape and also couldn’t be pinned down to a complimentary font for signs or stationary. We persevered and hours of conversations with professionals within the commercial printing industry at first glance would say, “ Get a new logo. This is impossible.” But eventually they would come around, especially if we were ordering fifty thousand labels at a time. Our logo started to appear on everything to compliment our brand. From ribbons to pastry cups, everything displayed our slightly off center logo. It was gratifying when the Italians, who still make our pastry cups in Italy, had no problem with the quirk in our logo. No wonder everyone loves Italy. Each year when reordering our sales rep also warned me that I had better get the order in before a specific date because the Italians take their vacations seriously and usually close for six weeks every summer. Making beautiful things and enjoying life was a philosophy I could aspire to.
When we finally could afford to have our logo printed on the top of our custom cake boxes , they also struggled with its slightly slanted presentation. I still think it was worth the trouble. As an aside, you have probably noticed that we put a doily in every single box that leaves the bakery. A doily just says , I am not your average item sitting in this empty box, I am worthy of this delicately cut piece of paper. Because of our love of this simple addition to our presentation, we eventually incorporated it onto the outside boxes as well. The pink and white design on the outside of every box is actually an enlargement of the doily that sits on the inside. I think it’s finally the perfect package. It only took forty three years to get it right.
Sharon Butler
Co-Founder