Papermoon

Brand Development

Building a stationary brand with my passion for traditional pen-drawing

This project started with my passion for dip-pen drawing. While I am not a master of pen drawing, I have always been in love with it since when I visited a museum of a Japanese comic-book artist. The goal of this project was to create a stationary brand and promote this traditional craft to a younger audience.

Project Type

Personal Project

Tools Used

Photoshop

Illustrator

Indesign

Milanote

Notion

Skills Used

Competitor analysis, mood board, marketing research, target audience, brand guideline, logo design, mockup design

🌙 Brand Values

Based on the goal, I defined four core values that the brand stands for:

Reliable - We provide high-quality products and service
Passionate - We are enthusiastic about what we do
Inspiring - We help our customers’ creative journey
Traditional - We make our products in an authentic way

👤 Target Audience

The target audience for this project was art students in their late teens to early 20s who are attending art school or pursuing a creative journey. They are open to trying out new mediums to express their art, but not particularly interested in dip-pen drawing.

✏️ Challenge

The biggest challenge was creating a traditional dip-pen brand that attracts the target audience. Although the product is classic stationery, a heavy focus on traditional craft would conflict since the company is new. My approach was to create a whimsical and magical identity that almost feels like it’s from a movie. I drew inspiration from vintage astronomy books and posters that included celestial objects.

🎨 Design

The Papermoon logo consists of a dip-pen and a crescent moon that are positioned to look like the uppercase letter “P”. Initially, the penholder part was longer but to make the logo suitable for any size or orientation, I changed it to be shorter.
The primary colours of Papermoon, the Gold Moon and the Midnight Blue, create a great contrast for the logo to stand out like a bright moon at midnight. The secondary colour used for stars, the Moon Dust, supplements it while keeping the centre of attention to the logo.