-Design | Branding | Illustration-
Overview
Bevo’s Toy Box
Welcome to Bevo’s Toybox! A toy store in Austin, TX that has been open since 1999 and has had the same theme since then. It is a colorful and whimsical store that will for sure bring out the inner child in anyone who visits. The store has a wide variety of toys, ranging from the 1980’s all the way to a few current items.
The Problem
Due to the aftermath of the pandemic, places like this are at risk of being shut down due to lack of business. Online shopping has taken over the market due to accessibility and prices. The client has asked me to do a complete rebrand, in hopes to draw in customers again. The idea is to make customers want to go out and shop, have a good time, and overall have a fun experience, instead of just shopping online. They are asking for a new logo (they didn’t have one to work with, so I will be doing one from scratch), custom merchandise, and basic retail items to go with the new theme (uniforms, shopping bags, and signage).
Ideation and Inspiration
I begin this process, I wanted to get an idea of what the existing company brand is and build off of that. The type of image they want to convey at this store is a whimsical and fun space where kids can enjoy toys like the old times and adults can connect to it on both a nostalgic level and a fun day out with the family. We want kids to get the feeling of a magical place, a place where they can physically see all these toys, make connections, and can imagine all the possibilities they can have with them, instead of just scrolling the Amazon app.
With that in mind, I know I wanted to do an cartoon illustration. Something fun, colorful, and easy to change and manipulate for other elements of the brand.
Moodboard
When crafting my moodboards, I decided to do three separate ones, all with a theme to highlight a word that I thought represented the client best. The three words that stuck out to me best were timeless, collectable, and imaginative.
Imaginative
Collectable
Matrix
Timeless
Sketches
Digital Drafts
Round 1
Round 2
Final Design
mOCKUPS
Reflection
Overall, This project was a success and I accomplished what I set out to design. The brand that I have created for Bevo’s Toy Box represents exactly what the company stands for; It represents a fun and child-like place that children and adults can come to enjoy a energetic and whimsical space and where adults can be reminded of what it’s like to love a toy again. In this brand, we needed a face, someone to represent the kid inside us all. He had to be someone fun, innocent and loving, preferably an animal, that all kids would enjoy. Since the company is called Bevo’s Toy box, and based in the heart of Texas, we decided to use the University of Texas Mascot, the longhorn, Bevo. If you are from Texas, especially Austin, Bevo in any shape or form is instantly recognizable. I designed this version of Bevo to be a young cartoonish longhorn who loves to play with toys.
Moving forward, I would love to design a mobile station for the store, like a booth that could be taken to toy conventions. Conventions always bring in a massive crowd and I feel having a booth would help with promotion. However, overall, I am very happy the way this design came out and loved doing it.