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MaDaLu - Ice Cream Shop
Brand & Graphic Design
Graphic Design & Brand Identity
MaDaLu, an upcoming artisanal Italian ice cream shop, needed a complete brand identity to launch successfully in the vibrant and design-conscious Copenhagen market. My role as the Graphic and Brand Designer was to create a memorable visual identity from the ground up that would capture the essence of authentic Italian gelato.
The goal was to craft a brand that felt both genuinely Italian—warm, playful, and delicious—and perfectly at home in a modern Scandinavian city. The project encompassed everything from the logo and color palette to custom patterns and typography, building a comprehensive and flexible visual language ready for their grand opening.
Project Information
Client Name : MaDaLu
Date : Summer 2025
Location : Copenhagen
How I Start This Project
The MaDaLu logo was crafted to be playful and organic, with custom lettering that feels handmade and unique, reflecting the artisanal quality of the ice cream. From this central element, I developed a versatile color palette drawn from natural ingredients and a series of custom brand patterns. These elements were designed to be flexible, working across everything from packaging and in-store signage to social media, ensuring a consistent and delightful brand experience at every touchpoint.
The Brand Identity Booklet
More than just a logo, I delivered a complete Brand Identity Booklet, the strategic blueprint for the MaDaLu brand. This guide ensures consistency across all touch points and empowers the shop to build a strong, recognizable brand experience.
The booklet includes:
- Logo & Identity: Clear rules for the core logo (a blend of a heart and a gelato cone), including monochrome versions to ensure versatility across all materials.
- Voice & Tone: Defines the brand’s “Playful,” “Modern,” and “Inviting” personality with practical guidelines on how to communicate with customers.
- Color & Typography: A curated color palette inspired by natural gelato flavors, paired with a clear typographic hierarchy using the Moga and Montserrat fonts.
- Brand Application: Real-world mockups for packaging, signage, and digital assets to guide confident and consistent brand implementation.
Challenge on this Project
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• Standing Out in a Competitive Food Market
Copenhagen has a sophisticated and crowded food scene. The challenge was to create a brand that would immediately capture attention and feel unique. The solution was to avoid Italian clichés and instead focus on a distinctive, ownable color palette and a series of playful, abstract patterns that felt both modern and memorable. -
• Balancing Italian Warmth with Scandinavian Minimalism
The brand needed to feel authentically Italian without appearing kitschy or out of place in Copenhagen. I solved this by pairing a soft, expressive logo with a clean, structured typography and layout system. This juxtaposition created a brand identity that feels both warmly inviting and stylishly sophisticated. -
• Designing a Versatile and Scalable Brand System
The identity had to be effective across a wide range of applications, from tiny ice cream cup lids to large storefront signage and digital marketing campaigns. The challenge was to ensure consistency. I developed a modular system of brand patterns and secondary logo marks that could be easily adapted for any format while maintaining a strong, cohesive look. -
• Visually Communicating "Delicious" and "Artisanal"
How do you make a brand feel like delicious, high-quality ice cream? The main creative challenge was to evoke a sense of taste and craftsmanship. I focused on using soft, rounded shapes in the logo and a color palette drawn directly from natural gelato flavors to create an immediate, sensory connection to the product itself.