In my (almost) 32-years of being alive on this earth, I was blessed to have met some really kind, talented people. My first plow-through of college had me shaking hands and bumping elbows with literally thousands of people—fellow students in my classes, people during all four orientations (as both a participant and employee), staff members, faculty, parents, presenters, etc. It was a lot of people. I graduated having made several connections, a good number of those I still keep in touch with today.
Now that I’m in my second round of higher education, I’m doing it all over again. This time, however, it’s on a much smaller scale and I’m finding it a little easier to make bonds with those I see twice a week for 3-4 months at a time.
All of these people come from diverse backgrounds, both life and career, which makes it very interesting to hold conversations with them. One of these people became a fast friend last fall and recently, a new client.
Meet Alyssa Laufer, AKA the Phillyfoodaholic (@phillyfoodaholic). She kept her social media presence as a food critic a secret (not really, it just never came up) with our newly formed friend group for a while. When she let it slip that she managed an Instagram that had over 1600 followers and was the reason she was able to try a lot of varying foods throughout Philadelphia, we all immediately followed her for support (and to drool during and after class). She admitted she stopped keeping up with it as she had when she first started due to graduating from college and getting her first post-grad job. Regardless, her page was still thriving.
A few months into knowing each other, Alyssa announced to us that she decided it was time for a lifestyle change and went vegetarian. This didn’t rattle our friend group since the lot of us generally have easy-to-please palates and will eat anything that isn’t gross (totally subjective). We supported her and tried to make things comfortable at get-togethers where we all brought dishes, making sure some of us brought vegetarian friendly things.
At the end of last semester, she mentioned to me she had tried to pitch a collaboration offer to Ortega (you know, taco shells, salsas, other miscellaneous “authentic” (read: faux) Mexican food products). They were interested but wanted to see a media kit. She seemed a bit panicked, as she didn’t have one, but I told her we’d work it out. She also realized that this new chapter in her dietary life would mean either ending Phillyfoodaholic or conforming it—being a go-getter and never a quitter, she decided it was time to let the social media extension of her interests evolve with her. For that, she also needed a new look.
For a little over a month we met online (at this point quarantine was in full swing) and went over things like her goals and visions, colors, concepts, layouts, etc. It was very easy to work with Alyssa, as she was always prepared with inspiration (like the screenshot on the right), organization, and a pretty clear idea of what she wanted. She was proactive in setting up folders online for both of us to work in and shared with me her Pinterest to get an idea of her vision through color and design. In the end, she was able to walk away with a brand new logo to use across all of her social media (and wherever else it would be applicable) and a 2-page media kit to send out to companies for collaborative work.
For the logo, which is what I suggested we start with, she was torn between doing something bold and something basic. We looked at different food blog logos that existed, color palettes, and even typefaces/fonts. She said to me, “We might just need to make it straight and basic.” Although that works for some brands, it doesn’t work for all. I came up with three pages of concepts.
The first page is where I kept it straight and basic. I tried to pair typefaces together that could work. Normally I’d try to pair a serif with a sans, but I didn’t feel like it would work here and may actually inadvertently antiquate it. I then moved into round designs. I don’t know why, but round logos and layouts are my favorite; they work very well in almost any situation, make awesome stickers, and just look more thought out. I tried to play with ideas related to Alyssa and her alter ego, Phillyfoodaholic. I drew sparkles (because food is magic), attempted to create both sound and motion with veggies and a microphone, and even pulled it back a few notches with a simple thin stroke, a fork and knife and the name.
Alyssa was drawn to the very last one she saw. It was basic, just as she wanted, and had potential. Together on our calls we’d make design decisions while I screenshared so she could get exactly what she wanted.
We found that the large fork and knife worked, but not as it was. We moved onto a thinner set of utensils with a sleeker appearance and thickened the outer stroke along with the font (also changing the typeface to something a bit less stylistic).
Alyssa was thrilled, but there was something a bit odd. There was too much negative space. Drawing inspiration from a logo I saw while doing some research of my own, I thought, “what if the stroke was a bowl?” I took the veggies from the megaphone version, removed the fork and spoon, and created a visual salad of sorts.
Alyssa liked it, but felt like all of those veggies didn’t quite represent her, so I removed some, enlarged others, and thus, the final design was created.
We then moved on to color and sizing. Alyssa had added to her pinterest a few screenshots that showed palettes of colors she really liked. I took these screenshots and eyedropped each color and applied it to a grid. I then converted all of the colors to PANTONE (because it is so much easier to work with PANTONE—it’s just one number to remember, not a formula of numbers like in sRGB/RGB, LAB, CMYK, etc.), labeled them all and created four palettes from the master.
Alyssa chose the warm color story that incorporates some cool greens. She felt this reflected her much better than the others, even though she wanted a purple to be present. We took these colors and began playing with combinations and effects like gradients. The gradients looked cool, but we decided they may not translate well along different platforms and applications, so we once again dialed it back and kept the colors flat.
We liked the look of a colored circle background, but after a while, the logo looked confined to the circle, almost suffocating it. Instead, after some trial and error, we made the circle white so when applied to social media profile pictures, it would retain some padding around the copy, and when printed would still look free as a bird.
The final color of the logo, after trying a few on Instagram, was orange. Orange—warm, inviting, not quite bold enough to make you hungry, but definitely tickles the senses. The logo was also saved in the dark olive green and red to promote freshness, and yes, hunger.
When the logo was finalized, it was time to start on the media kit.
I’ll be honest—I never worked on a media kit before. I had an idea of what they were and why they were used, but I never designed one. I guess there’s a first time for everything!
I did some homework and looked up influencer media kits. Some of them had photos of the influencer, others didn’t. I saw ones with beautiful monochromatic themes and light, airy copy, and others that were more bold and made an impactful statement. I even saw ones where the influencer gave their rates for collaboration opportunities. The possibilities seemed endless.
Alyssa had created a Google Docs file that had all of the important analytics information on her Instagram. I took this information and laid it out onto the new document. There wasn’t a lot of info, and that’s OK—the important things were there. I took some on Alyssa’s food photographs, and thought long and hard about what made sense. The logo was circular, so I definitely wanted to play with curves and radius corners, which worked out well.
Originally I designed everything using the cool green tones, and although Alyssa liked it, she said she wanted it to be warm to match the logo color she chose. I recolored everything and tried to balance out the information on two pages. Originally, I added on a pricing reference sheet, but after some consideration, Alyssa said she didn’t want to have that on there to leave room for flexibility. Instead, we rearranged some of the elements and invited in more visuals. We were able to sneak in more color by using the logos of her past/current partnerships in their standard forms.
Once everything was in place and triple-checked, Alyssa was ready to send Ortega her new media kit.
Albeit small, it’s a big step for both Alyssa and me. If you want to check out the Phillyfoodaholic for yourself, check the link above or search “phillyfoodaholic” on Instagram.