Client: Keke Store, formerly George’s Wanaka
Brief: To create a new name and logo for George’s Wanaka, a gift shop selling NZ clothing and gifts, to take it forward with a fresh new image.
Jayne from George’s approached us to help her with the renaming and rebranding of her Wanaka gift shop George’s. Started by her mum back in 1991, George’s has been part of the Wanaka retail landscape for nearly 30 years, and Jayne wanted a fresh new look to take it into the next 30 years.
Working with some initial suggestions from Jayne and her team, we brainstormed ideas around New Zealand native flora and fauna. We ended up working with New Zealand flax, harakeke (Phormium tenax) – an important native plant with long, stiff, upright leaves and dull red flowers. Traditionally used for clothing, mats, plates, medicine, baskets, ropes, nets and even rattles for baby gifts, this seemed to be the right fit. Shortening it down to just KEKE we created a catchy, short, and easy to say name that would translate well into the tourism market.
We sketched a variety of ideas, and these lettering forms we used became the clear front-runner. Making the capital letters ‘K’ and the lower-case letters ‘e’ all one height gave the logo a fun, friendly look. Written with capital E’s it looked less approachable, and we wanted to keep an organic, friendly feel to the logo.
For colours we went with a palette that reflected the land and waters of Aotearoa. For flexibility we provided versions on each background colour, and also supplied variations in circles.
Jayne has created a Shopify website, and the logo is looking fabulous as she starts rolling it out across signage and marketing materials.