WHAT:
Mountain Meadow Ranch is a summer camp located in Northern California for kids aged seven through sixteen. They offer a wide variety of activities related to animal care, crafts, and land and water sports as well as additional “Out-Trips” where campers are taken to explore the surrounding landscape.
For this project, I designed around the theme ‘Land and Sea’. Clean and brightly colored illustrations are at the heart of this branding, and typefaces were chosen to complement them.
WHY:
I decided on the theme ‘Land and Sea’ to reflect the camp’s unique combination of farmland and coast. ‘Land’ represents the wilderness of summer camp and the location’s surrounding mountains, while ‘Sea’ references California’s beaches and the various bodies of water surrounding the camp.
The wordmark is derived from the Eyvindr typeface, as I thought it resembled a fence and brought a unique, farmlike energy to the branding. I chose Bahnschrift for the body copy because I liked its friendliness and simplicity.
After exploring several different design directions through moodboards and other visual inspiration sources, I began to solidify my research into drafts and sketches of the preestablished deliverables for this project.
I focused on the moods of ‘explorative’, ‘youthful’, and ‘encouraging’ while avoiding a ‘chic’ feeling. I felt I should reference exploration, as the surrounding landscape is so closely integrated into the camp experience. I wanted it to feel modern and young to appeal to an audience of kids and teenagers. I also thought it was important for the branding to feel welcoming and unintimidating, as kids may feel tense away from their families.
I designed two banner stands to welcome campers and direct them to the check-in table. They are meant to be placed in close proximity to one other, making the full illustration visible as they visually link together while still being detailed enough to stand alone.
In these I combine the theme of “Land and Sea” by using the sky as the sea through sea creatures, abstract bubbles, and water ripples. The text is handwritten to keep it in theme and match the line quality of my illustrations.
I made these colorful and lively to draw the attention of campers; I thought it would be important for these to be clearly visible, considering their functions. The prominent logo placement unifies the two and provides additional communication to campers, reassuring them that they are in the right spot.
These slide templates are meant to be used for camp presentations. The welcome slide is fully illustrated, as it is meant to be displayed for extended periods of time, giving campers something engaging to look at.
The other two slides are filled with placeholder text and white boxes in place of images. The corners of the image boxes are rounded, as I felt it would pair nicely with the rounded line quality of the illustrations. The first slide references the land half of the theme with mountains and trees, while the second references the sea through fish.
My stage backdrop design consists of three-dimensional illustrated trees and bushes arranged around a stage. The welcome slide illustration is used as a backdrop on a screen behind the stage, linking the two-dimensional scene with physical props in the foreground.
The trees and bushes are cardboard with vinyl stuck overtop to make the lines. They have cardboard stands on their backs away from the audience’s view, keeping them standing upright.
The screen display can be changed from the illustrated scene seen below; it serves as a default backdrop when there are no other slides to show on screen.
This is a photo board with cutouts in the two top eggs for campers to stick their heads into. I felt that a photo opp catered to children and teenagers should be funny to pique their interest, so I illustrated this scene. I explored a few different animals and ideas before ultimately landing on chickens, as I thought their inherent silliness best represented my vision for the camp.
Ideally this board would be displayed somewhere around where the camp’s actual chickens are located, above a surface that campers could comfortably kneel or sit on to stick their heads through.
This is a T-shirt worn by staff to differentiate them from campers. The logo extends into a mountain scene, with the implication of a meadow underneath the forest. The waves in the logo become gusts of wind, linking the logo with the rest of the design. A squirrel and two fish were chosen to represent land and sea respectively.
