Popeyes

Popeyes wanted to mature its brand while maintaining its energetic spirit. The new logo moves away from its cartoon-ish past by giving the letterforms a shared baseline and cap height, simultaneously increasing legibility and modernizing the wordmark. The updated logo exemplifies how seriously Popeyes takes its food while the rest of the visual identity shows off their friendly, playful personality.

As Popeyes expanded into global markets, it found itself craving a chicken icon to convey its fried chicken offering. Poppy adds a dose of personality on social and digital executions as well as on environmental graphics. She interacts with the brand's illustrated elements for occasional moments of playfulness.

All the colors in the palette come from Popeyes world. The brand orange originates from its heritage and is inspired by the color of its world-famous marinade. The lively supporting colors reflect its varied menu offerings and the vibrant colors around on the streets of New Orleans.

Color was a major pain point for Popeyes. Up until the rebrand, the brand had multiple hues of orange in use across their restaurants, packaging substrates and website. I was tasked with finding a new hue that would mature the brand as well as crafting a dynamic secondary and tertiary palette to provide depth and personality. I meticulously worked to spec out the new palette to appear cohesively across all touchpoints.

Designed to embody the spirit of Popeyes, Chicken Sans speaks with clarity and directness while revealing a humanistic, spirited nature. Personality is detailed in the letterforms. It is eccentric, epitomized by asymmetric endings and hooked characters, and friendly as denoted by round letterforms. I provided guidance and feedback on the development of typeface during the collaboration with Colophon.

A visual embodiment of Popeyes’ personality, iconography balances human touch and bold graphics. The icons supporting the brand system as annotations, designed to communicate key messages quickly while increasing brand equity. The set is comprised of functional icons to provide simple messaging, and expressive icons to talk about the brand.

The illustration style is a reflection of the handcrafted nature of Popeyes’ food married with the energy and eclectic nature of NOLA. The pattern is lively, gestural and bursting with personality. It is comprised of pieces of the hand-drawn iconography, embodying the rich cultural and culinary diversity of Louisiana. I consistently worked to refine the pattern over the duration of the rebrand, stitching the icons together to pictorially evolve the brand narrative.

I helped develop Popeyes new packaging, deciding to hero the ownable brand orange and anecdotal pattern. I delivered press-ready dielines, worked with vendors to ensure colors appeared consistently across substrates and created a unique version of the brand pattern for each piece in the packaging suite.

I was tasked with reimagining how Popeyes appears in photography. Aiming to standout in the QSR space, I proposed hiring Bon Appetit staff photographer Alex Lau to shoot Popeyes offerings in an editorial manner: spotlighting craveable closeups, tactile textures and authentic imperfections.

I created designs for an updated mobile app and website that reflect the rebrand, spanning menu offerings and online ordering.

I was responsible for creating the brand guidelines, outlining the brand overview, brand toolkit and brand expression.