Behind the Scenes with Handmade Habitat
My collaboration with Handmade Habitat is a fine illustration of the value of finding your community.
My home base is Silver Spring, Maryland, where there is a small but thriving community of creative, entrepreneurial people who support and lift up one another’s ventures. That’s how I met Amina Ahmad, owner and founder of Handmade Habitat, first through Instagram, then through happy hour gatherings and “tweet-ups,” which is basically when people who were mainly acquainted via social media actually all got our butts in the same place and talked to one another face-to-face.
When we first began our collaboration, Amina had been making candles under her Handmade Habitat brand for a few years and had designed her own logo and graphics. She’s a visually thoughtful person, so she had a strong start to her brand in terms of having chosen consistent elements to use throughout to build something familiar and recognizable.
She wanted to expand her business and needed a new design that would reflect her evolution and provide room to grow. I had never worked on a self-care brand before (outside of a school project designing for a fictional tea brand!) so I was excited for the new experience.
So it begins
Our goal for the Handmade Habitat branding was to communicate a balance of professional, high quality products with mindful elements like natural materials and local production.
We looked to the design inspiration that Amina had already been pulling from—mandalas, hand-drawn illustrations, the color palette. The Handmade Habitat brand is truly a reflection of her personality so it was vital that the visuals be anchored in her own inspiration and aesthetic.
Handmade Habitat products strongly feature botanical and plant-based elements, so we incorporated natural elements—florals and leaves—into the new logo designs.
Initially we created two logos—one large for times it needed to feature prominently, one small for packaging labels or smaller products. See images below, both on their own and featured on products.
The highlight color of the smaller labels can be changed according to product, such as pale green for a spearmint-scented candle or lavender for a lavender-vanilla one. Because we knew there was so much potential for growth, the branding was designed to be very adaptable.
And here’s something wild: The flowers I drew for the logo happened to closely resemble the style of flowers Amina would draw growing up. That was a wild synergy, mind-meld kind of thing that we still can’t believe happened the way it did!
Growth and challenges
Over the years, Amina has added numerous products to her Handmade Habitat line and has grown her business by leaps and bounds. One of the challenges in creating and updating the branding was figuring out where there could be variances so it didn’t get repetitive and boring, and what needed to stay the same in order to keep the logos consistent and recognizable. Ultimately, we focused on a primary font paired with hand drawn illustrations in simple layouts with a flexible color palette to pull everything together.
We’ve maintained our collaboration for 6+ years now, coming back together to focus on new elements as Amina’s business has grown. I helped design a print wholesale catalogue for her and have offered support in packaging updates. We’ve also become good friends and launched another creative venture, the Unofficial Hand Lettering Society of Silver Spring, together (see, I told you Silver Spring has a great creative community!). Amina has incorporated her own hand lettering into some of the brand visuals as well as her own natural illustrations for packaging.
It’s wonderful to see how much the brand is growing and changing over the years while still remaining true to a clear core personality that’s natural, real and comforting.
A Note from the Client
This logo has really rooted the brand over the years. It stands out, is memorable to our community, and has enough different elements that I have been able to remix over the years, creating a consistent brand look and feel even as things grow and change. I always come back to the core elements and colors no matter what we are working on and I absolutely love the base that Christy built for us all these years later.
Amina Ahmad, Owner, Handmade Habitat
CHANGEMAKER OF THE MONTH
For this month’s change maker of the month, I’m spotlighting and donating to the Capital Area Food Bank, DC’s largest hunger relief organization. I’m donating in honor of Amina’s support of this great org as she has donated portions of her profits to them in the past!