My sister Nina asked me to help her with the identity and branding of her new company, Pasta Girl. Pasta Girl produces Sicilian-style recipes and baked goods based on the original peasant-style foods my mother Angela cooked for our family.
Mom, now in her mid-eighties, never really kept an organized recipe book or measured ingredients for her dishes. Instead, her measuring methodology included a "a handful of this," or "a pinch of that," and the usual "I add until it tastes right - stop asking so many questions Tommy and get out of the kitchen." So while mom’s tastes have changed over the last few years and she has forgotten most of the ingredients, Nina has been transcribing and cooking each dish in a slow trial and error experimentation to figure out the contents of each recipe. She will then turn them into a family recipe book that will eventually be published under the Pasta Girl brand name.
As for Pasta Girl's identity, the creative approach was almost a no brainer when it came to, if you will, a creative a strategy. Mom had to be the icon of the brand. It was an emotional inspiration stemming from the images of our childhood; a large Italian-American family consisting of Mom, Dad, five kids and grandma Maceri from Palermo riding shotgun in the 64' wood paneled Mercury Colony Park Station Wagon.
Here's a review of the creative progression of the logo as we continued through the rounds to the final design.
The first step was to concept a few hand-drawn type treatments:
After that, we scanned some of the preferred type to the computer, traced with the pen tool, perfected the lines, and chose the colors.
The next step was to add the type to the chosen graphic elements, designed by Tom Saputo and Georgia Lange.
Tada! The logo added to a packaging concept. It's still a work in progress, but it's almost there. We'll continue to update you on the Pasta Girl saga as the look becomes finalized.
