Sweet Sin Design

On my last travels, I had gone to Kenya, my first visit to the continent of Africa. During this visit, I met many people and made some good friends. One of them had a little garden in her home where she would make homemade food for her friends. I decided to help come up with a brand and logo that she could use for the products she gives out.

The name La Luna di Loresho comes from many concept. It’s in Italian because she’s Italian. Loresho is an area of Nairobi while Luna is a one of many labradors that roam the garden freely. Keeping the “L” sound together helps to roll the name easily. And to shorten it, it would be called LaLuLo. It’s fun, romantic, and yet homey and elegant at the same time.

One of these cute labradors is named Luna. Ah, a dog’s life.

I typically design logos by hand first to help eliminate ideas quickly. I combed through Pinterest for logos tagged: moon, luna, dog, animals. I found some very amazing ones and some very clever ones. In my case, I played with the dog facing the moon, the L repeated in handwriting text, and the moon shaped out of the L or the dog.

With the flourish of the “L”, I used that as the main shape of the logo, creating a crescent moon. This flourish is repeated to create a pulsating moon, like rings around a moon during a hazy night or a night of impending rain, which was often the case of nights in Kenya where storms grazed through the night and the daytime was heated up.

The text was designed in mind using the crescent. I ended up removing it but keeping the calligraphy drawing done in ink and nib pen.

With several layouts, I ended up flipping the moon and the dog. Thus, instead of a waning moon, I ended up with a waxing moon, which in turns helps emphasizing the “growth” of not just the moon, but the garden of home grown veggies and fruits used into making homemade food.

For color choices, I browsed through my photos of the garden and picked out some beautiful flowers that grew there. The flowers were the inspiration for the color choices.

I picked the mauve and gold, allowing them to bleed into each other to created a warm “sunset” feel that was vibrant on both black and white background.

Using the crescent again, I created a pattern that looks like fiery-like fur, like the short hair of a labrador even though they are moon shape being repeated. This helps to combine both the moon and the dog together.