October 2021 - May 2022
Process
The Costume Shop at Millersville University is a large shop with over 25,000 costumes ranging from renaissance attire to animal costumes and Santa suits. The shop was established in 1982 and had little to no branding. My partner and I stepped in and worked to create a full rebrand that reflected the whimsical and fun feeling of the Costume Shop, while still having a professional look to it.
We first started by creating a new logo for the stop. After creating several different options and getting feedback from our client, we landed on this whimsical, colorful logo. To go along with our static logo, we created a dynamic version of the logo that could be used throughout the Costume Shops branding.
While working on the logo, at the same time we were creating a rough style guide for ourselves to reference while working on the logos and other rebranded materials. We picked a color scheme and typefaces to use. We also created a pattern that worked alongside our new logo.
We put together an official brand guideline that can be referenced by the employees of the Costume Shop in order to ensure everything is used consistently regardless of which employees, new or old, are using it. This also ensures new material that is created down the road match the rest of the rebrand.
The first team we wanted to work on after creating the new brand guidelines was the business card. This lets us see how well everything worked together and if anything in our new brand style needed to be tweaked to fit better. We wanted the cards to be fun, but still legible. Along with the creation of the business card, we created a new email signature for the shop's employees. From there, we worked to create different-sized flyers that could work both printed and digitally. The costume shop frequently has yard sales for their old costumes, so we focused on making flyers for that specifically.
A majority of the costumes in the MU Costume Shop are donated by locals or other shops that have to close down. Any other item in the store is created by hand by the employees. Because of this, there is no real system for marking the sizes of the costumes. Additionally, these costumes are getting rented out to major theater productions, so there needs to be a way to mark which costumes are theirs. We created a cloth tag that can be sewn into each costume, that had the shop's logo and designated spots to write the sizes of the clothing down.
Along with this organization system, we created signage for their rows of costumes. With over 25,000 costumes, the rows upon rows of different articles of clothing can be confusing. Each row tries to stay to a specific era of clothing, but the signage will help customers to get a quick understanding of what costume styles are in which row.
The Costume Shops' marketing relies primarily on social media in order to get the word out, so it was only natural we created a new profile picture and header to go along with the brand.
We also redid their original customer form. The form was cramped and used graphics that didn’t connect with either the new or old brand. We redid the form, focusing on making it more legible and adding the new brand logo and colors.
As a fun addition to the rebrand, we designed a notebook that matches the brand, as a lot of information such as clothing sizes of customers and various dates get written down while communicating with customers. We also created stickers that customers could have. This works both as a fun takeaway from the shop, and also as a form of marketing since the people around the customer would then see the stickers and learn about the shop.
