Ta Daa!

Last week I was putting the finishing touches to a new identity that I've created for a French childrens' clothing company called Ta Daa. The company creates a wide range of clothes by taking old unwanted garments and and turning them in to fresh, new ones for children just like magic!  Well OK it's not really magic it's all done through a talented team and a lot of up-cycling. Up-cycling is (as defined by Wikipedia) "The process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value.", so not only has this been a really interesting project that has involved everything from naming, branding and application, but a really worthwhile one as well that takes a sometimes wasteful industry like fashion and makes it more sustainable.

I'm not going to go into the minutiae of how the logo came into existence except to say that it was based on the same principle that the company takes, which is turning one thing into something else.

An early application of the logo as a clothing label.

After a lot of experimenting and sketching shapes I came to the shape of the 'D'. There was something about it that reminded me of a pocket for a coat or a pair of jeans so it had some resonance already. Then from the D shape I set about creating the shape of the 'T'. Here's a small diagram to show how that came about.

This approach was use to create both the logo and the wordmark and gave way to creating a unique typeface for the brand. This typeface has no numerals at the moment and features a traditional character set, with a few variations to accomodate the French languague. The font is designed to be used as a title face and is obviously not created for use as body text. 

The logo has 3 colour ways, the main palette which is green and two other versions which are blue and pink. It also has a more playful aspect where the idea of transformation comes through again. By the simple addition of eyes and a set of standardized shapes I created three characters, a whale, a frog and a rabbit. These appear on sticker sheets, badges and colouring in pages and not only help promote the brand but keep little hands busy, giving Mummy and Daddy a few moments of respite!

The Ta Daa Characters on a sticker sheet…

…and as fridge magnets.

As I said at the start this has been a great project to have been involved in and I hope it goes from strength to strength, If you want to discover more just pop over to their website in the meantime I'll leave you with the frog…