Wild chips
Brand Exploration
Welcome to
wild chips
This is Wild Chips, an academic branding project completed during my junior year as a Communication Design major. The assignment allowed complete freedom in industry and direction. I chose to build a food and beverage brand to explore packaging, storytelling, and consumer-focused brand systems.
Early in the process, we were encouraged to select an animal to represent our brand, and one that represents us, I chose a moose.
Moose have always felt like gentle giants to me. Strong, grounded, and calm rather than aggressive. That personality aligned with the kind of brand I wanted to build.
I also made a conscious decision not to center the brand in the United States. Moose hold strong symbolic importance in Canada, which gave the project a clear sense of place and cultural grounding. That choice immediately shaped the brand’s tone and positioning.
From there, the focus shifted to defining purpose. Wild Chips needed a reason to exist beyond being visually appealing. I anchored the brand around environmental conservation and responsible agriculture. The idea was to support sustainable farming practices while prioritizing partnerships with local Canadian producers.
Around the time this project began, interest in buying locally was increasing, and that context helped reinforce the relevance of a Canadian-led chip brand.
With the foundation set, I moved into sketching and exploration.
These early concepts were loose and exploratory, focused on form, symbolism, and motion rather than polish. One visual element kept appearing throughout this phase: the sun.
Around the time this project began, interest in buying locally was increasing, and that context helped reinforce the relevance of a Canadian-led chip brand.
The sun felt essential for multiple reasons. It is a familiar symbol within the chip category, often tied to farming and growth.
Beyond that, I became fascinated by a Siberian myth about a celestial moose catching the sun in its antlers. That story immediately connected with the brand’s themes and gave the logo a narrative layer that went beyond surface-level symbolism.
The visual style of the brand was coming together, but what about the strategy?
While the logo still needed refinement, the brand personality began to take shape. At this stage, the project shifted from asset-making to system-thinking. I started asking broader questions. How would Wild Chips speak? How would it present itself across different touchpoints? What tone would feel authentic?
Writing became a key part of the process. Developing the brand’s language helped clarify visual decisions and reinforced consistency across the system. The more the brand was defined in words, the stronger it became visually.
This marked an early stopping point where everything began to feel cohesive. I started assembling the brand guidelines, outlining rules for logo usage, typography, color, and voice. Progress was strong, but the workflow itself was not linear.
Much of the project developed simultaneously. Mockups, written content, and guideline layouts were all evolving at once. That momentum helped the brand grow quickly, but it also introduced the project’s largest challenge.
With only a few weeks left, most of the mockups were complete and roughly seventy-five percent of the brand guidelines were finished.
The visual style of the brand was coming together, but what about the strategy?