
Brand & Social
Handmade Harmony Brand
The Brief
This one started as a coursework project, build a full brand from nothing, name, identity, strategy, budget, the whole thing. But somewhere along the way it stopped feeling like an exercise. Handmade Harmony, a brand built around bespoke paper items, personalised gifts, and 3D printed elements, turned into something I actually believed in, not just something I was marking off an assignment brief.
The Process
I built the brand from the ground up. The name itself was deliberate, pairing the craftsmanship of handmade products with the balance and calm the word "harmony" suggests, something that would sit well across every touchpoint the brand would ever use.
The logo followed the same logic. A winding white path rising toward a sun-like shape, meant to represent the creative process itself, not a straight line from idea to product, but something that involves exploration and a bit of discovery along the way. I paired it with a blue and white colour scheme specifically, blue for trust and reliability, white for kindness and safety, both qualities I wanted a customer to feel before they'd even read a word about the brand. For typography, I chose a handwritten-style font, Lumios Marker, because a brand built on handmade products needs to look handmade too, not sterile, not mass-produced.
From there I built out the actual strategy: real customer personas rather than a vague target audience, a content and posting plan tailored to each platform (Instagram for visual storytelling, Pinterest for the more design-led audience, Facebook for an older, more community-focused crowd), specific posting times backed by when each audience is actually online, and a full content calendar to keep it consistent rather than reactive. I mapped the website too, a full sitemap and landing page structure built around simplicity, easy navigation, and a shop experience that wouldn't get in its own way. And because I don't think a strategy means anything without a way to measure it, I built in an analytics plan from day one, Google Analytics for the website, platform-specific insights for social, so every decision afterwards could be based on what was actually working, not just what looked good in a deck.
I even worked out a full budget, social advertising, domain and tooling costs, and a genuine income target, because a brand strategy that ignores the money behind it isn't a complete one.
The Outcome
This started as an assignment and became something with a genuinely complete foundation behind it, brand identity, strategy, website structure, and budget all built to actually work together, not just to satisfy a brief. It's still an idea I believe in rather than a business trading day to day, but it's one I'd be ready to build further the moment it made sense to.
