CLIENT INFO:
Owner and Executive Chef Katie Felix is on a mission is to provide today’s curious kitchen enthusiast with the one tool no one who steps into the kitchen can live without… CONFIDENCE. Her answer and vessel to supporting and executing on that mission is non other than Karvin Katers an educational catering service that provides today’s everyday person with the knowledge, tools and resources to bring out their inner chef.
She and her team have taken it a step further and have coined their disruptive mission “KITCHEN KONFIDENCE”, for the modern day millenial who aims to remove the flash in the pan antics from the kitchen and replace it with good old fashion curiosity, confidence and common sense.
With this platform Karvin Katers will teach their clients and audience how to develop great tasting, affordable meals that don’t require complicated tools, all while giving them the roadmap they need to maintain a sustainable knowledge of kitchen-how-to’s.
OUR SERVICES:
• Brand Audit
• Discovery
• Strategy
• Research
• Brand Identity
• Collaterals
• Brand Identity Guide
THE CHALLENGE
Working with Katie and the Karvin Katers team was truly a fun and exciting experience. We worked through weeks of several strategy sessions to get very clear on Katies vision and mission. The challenge with this project was mainly choosing the most ideal direction to take as we had so much to go on thanks to Katie’s clear vision for the brand.
We as a team wanted to be sure we were focusing on the key elements that truly makes Karvin Katers the professional disruptors of their industry. Because Katie has such a rich cultural history that she wanted to maintain as the foundation of the brand and its story, we decided to dive deep into her cultural roots and develop a brand story first before executing on the creation of the visual identity.
Katie wanted the identity to be something that could stand the test of time while being capable of holding the brand story within it and that story being able to be told without actually speaking it. This was definitely a challenge we were up for!
BUILDING THE CONCEPT
We started with a few weeks of research into Katie’s cultural history which led us down some very interesting pathways. As a native of the Dominican Republic, Katie wanted her culture to shine without being the star of the show.
We decided it was important to create a balance between all the elements that were important to Katie and her team so we attempted a few concepts that touched on a very native vibe but felt very unique to her space. We explored an extensive amount of options through many rapid iteration rounds and continued to refine the ideas till we hit a point that we realized we had done far enough.
Once we reached our tipping point we then began a process of deconstructing where we ended up to then find the simplified solution that would ultimately become the long standing identity for Karvin Katers.
THE SOLUTION
Once our team began to pull the layers back on a few concepts, we ultimately realized the most important element in Karvins story was the overall goal to instill confidence in the hearts and minds of their clients and audience.
We reviewed the brand roadmap we created for the Karvin team, and went back to our ideal customer avatars as well as the full brand story we develop during our strategy sessions and found the key element we were looking for.
That element and realization led us to the most intimidating tool anyone has in their kitchen… the knife and after doing some research on the history of the knife, we found the connection we were looking for and developed a beautiful logomark that fit the company and its brand like a glove.
The mark is comprised of 3 knife blades arranged in a way that forms a geometric K. It maintains the bold, edgy and sharp personality that Katie and her team were looking for while still being recognized as a leader and professional in their industry. It checks all the boxes of being appropriate, easily recognizable and flexible.
Our team was truly proud of this mark and so was the Karvin team. We then created a custom sans serif logotype to pair with the mark which embodied the same characteristics as the logomark.
