WHAT:
In this project, I rebranded Icy Icy Baby through a food truck wrap, menu, and three items of merchandise.
Icy Icy Baby is a food truck based in Minnesota selling shave ice made with organic, vegan, and gluten free ingredients. They offer a small selection of unique flavors that change often, also selling add-ons like coconut ice cream and juice. Their main audience consists of young adults, children, and families. They also cater at festivals, so they attract a lot of festival-goers.
WHY:
Icy Icy Baby prides themselves on their organic and creative shave ice flavors; I wanted to bring out the quirkiness of their unique flavors and brand name through the color palette. I went with the main colors of bright pink and blue, an accent color of dark blue, as well as pure black and white to suggest youth while giving a graphic and outlined feel. I also chose the typefaces for similar reasons.
I went with an illustration based approach to focus specifically on attracting a younger audience. I didn’t want to lean too heavily into the song from which the brand is named, so I went literally into an ice cold, too-cool-for-you baby concept. I figured my intended younger audience would relate more to a funny graphic than to song references from before their time. I also integrated penguins and a simple winter landscape into the main illustrated graphic, as penguins could literally be considered ‘icy icy babies’ in themselves.
I focused heavily on the logo, exploring 40 different directions through a series of thumbnails. I identified which ones had the most potential before delving further into drafts in Illustrator. Along the way I decided that my preferred logo was more of a snow cone than shave ice, so I changed it in the final version.
I experimented with a variety of potential truck wraps, considering different patterns and graphic elements. I ended up developing the penguin landscape direction into the final design, as it felt more fun and unique than the others.
I illustrated a scene of penguins enjoying shave ice in a winter landscape, with one penguin honking at my design for Icy Icy Baby’s mascot.
The front of the truck redirects to the back, where customers are met with an ordering window and handwritten advertisements of what the truck sells. Additionally, the snowy landscape and color usage would suggest frozen treats to an audience too far away to read the messaging.
This is a menu that can be printed out and displayed alongside the food truck. The menu is not restricted to the same color palette as the rest of the branding, as part of Icy Icy Baby’s gimmick is that unique flavors are swapped out regularly. This allows for unlimited customization and accurate depictions of the current flavors offered.
The illustration style is unified within the rest of the branding, relating to the logo and shave ice illustrations seen on the truck wrap.
The truck wrap mural is adapted into a tote bag and thermos, and the baby mascot at a tasteful size on a plain white T-shirt. I designed these to be recognizable to the Icy Icy Baby brand, without feeling like advertisements.
I figured the intended audience of children and their families would be able to get a lot of use out of these objects. The reusable nature of the tote bag and thermos also relate to Icy Icy Baby’s natural and organic products.