WASABI - combines the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi “see the beauty in your imperfections” and ultimately encourages acceptance of life’s unique flow. My client, Michelle, has built a business on seeing life through the lens of imperfection. Wasabi & Well's customers can be anybody but we are hyper-focused on Black women’s wellness healing journey. We offer therapy, community, and courses.

Design tone:

cozy

whimsy

reliable

safe

strong

insightful

cultured

Colors that are most appealing include the following hues of yellow, green, and pink in addition to neutral grounding colors like shades of browns, blacks, and whites. Michelle is from the Caribbean and lives in Miami. Many of her current customers are also from tropical places. Wasabi & Well LOVE the tropical aesthetic but they want it to feel cleaned up - curated + cozy -  so like a minimalist with a splash of flavor-fun.

Michelle wants her brand to sound like we are friends, we are a community, and we are chill yet motivated to work on healing.

While Wasabi & Well are in the serious business of healing trauma, depression, and other life challenges - they want to sound relatable just like they are in their sessions and courses.

After Michelle and I have completed our project kick-off call, I went off to create a mood board according to everything she has explained to me and envisioned for her brand identity.

Below is the mood board sent to Michelle:

Not only did I present the mood board to Michelle, I also created the color palette for her to review as well as an explanation of why I selected the palette. Lastly, using the color palette chosen, I had visually presented to Michelle that these colors will work well together with a great balance of contrast.

Once the mood board and color palette were approved, it was off to the races!

As always, I begin all of my designs in only black. I never begin with color as I can easily be biased and lean towards one color due to just the color alone.

Initially, I wanted to incorporate hands and some leaf element in the designs as Wasabi & Well represents community, warmth, and accepting everyone as their natural selves.

As I began to get my creative juices flowing more and more, I came across a more two-dimensional shape and natural elements such as a bowl, rock, hand, monstera leaf, and other natural and leafy drawings.

When I presented some of these to Michelle, she was immediately drawn to the hand, rock, and bowl elements.

Then I began to add some text while having the natural element drawings around it to get a feel and see if it matches the creative direction and mood board we agreed upon.

After this presentation, Michelle felt that it all felt too "delicate" and too "thin" for her branding.

I went back to the drawing board with fonts and found some that were a little more weighted. She had shown me a typeface that she liked with a more balanced weight rather than too thin or too thick. We went to search for some "retro" or "vintage" type of typefaces. Lastly, we decided we've found one that Michelle loved.

Once she agreed on the typeface, I was able to play with it a little more in customizing it. I added the bowl from an earlier sketch and incorporated it to the dot in the letter "i" in "Wasabi". I then added the bowl to the two L's at the end of "Well". I felt this continued the feel of curated and cohesiveness through the design. Subtle, but could be powerful!

Later down the road, Michelle had a late night lightbulb go off and decided to search for more typefaces. This time, we REALLY found "the one"!

Michelle wasn't sure which weight she wanted - regular or semibold weight. So, I presented her with both of them. She also wanted to see how the bowl can still be incorporated in her designs somehow. I decided to put the bowl inside the letter "B" in "Wasabi" to create an "imperfect" look which reflects her brand of embracing imperfections.

From here, she has decided on the semibold weight and the two bowls that are sideways. However, that also changes later down the road!

We finally nailed down the logo and Michelle had a genius idea of incorporating the rock and bowl in the ampersand. We switched from a "+" as the "and" to a "&" - we felt it was more embracing with the entire logo. In addition, I presented the bowl inside of the rock and mentioned that we could use this as a submark instead of the hand, rock, and bowl combination. She ended up loving the two so I told her we could keep both as two submarks!

I had a wonderful experience collaborating with Michelle for Wasabi & Well's brand identity! Even though there was some back and forth in communication with the design and its changes, we worked really well together and communicated openly while creating a safe space for both of us to feel like we are both heard.