Salty Lips
Oyster talk
Branding
Logo design
Corporate identity
Graphic communication
Commercial material
What do you relate oysters to? What drink would you accompany them with? And where? And when? As far as Salty Lips is concerned, the answers to all these questions were, are and will be the exact opposite of what you’re thinking. Salty Lips is a disruptive brand. Its aim is to keep a healthy distance between itself and the other local Australian oyster producers and conventional oyster-eating moments. In a nutshell (or an “oyster shell”), they are marketing a totally premium-quality product, albeit beyond the confines of the regular upmarket universe.
Designing a brand means defining a graphic system that best defines it and projects it: loyal, bold, vivid, vivacious, blatant…
Paul Viney, the company’s founder, and a lover of surfing, nature, and therefore of the sea, chose St. Helens, on the coast of Tasmania, to grow these exceptional oysters. Its waters are said to be the planet’s most limpid. Its air is pure and healthy. Its coastline has been hewn away by the relentless South Pacific waves. It is the ideal ecosystem for growing strong and resistant, meaty and strong-tasting oysters, sweet and salty in equal parts, with a slightly acid endnote. Oysters that grow in a marine paradise. Quality and personality.
That said — We were tasked with building a cool, funny and even a wee bit rowdy brand. Our colleagues from the Australian Marketing Agency Blue Harvest had already plotted a clear road map by coming up with the name Salty Lips, which not only steers away from the concept of a conventional name for a company that “makes” oysters, but is also suggestive and sexy to boot. Very bold indeed.
Thus, both the lettering and the illustration used as the brand’s imagotype have a casual, carefree, sensual air, linked to the surf aesthetic (very Australian and very important “down under”). As if it had been thought up by a bunch of friends who neither know nor care about the corporate universe of brands. Paul Viney is that type of guy. Ergo, so is his brand.
The colours chosen for the corporate identity are born of the sea, the beaches, the coasts and the environment’s exceptional ecosystem. A very dark and deep blue set against a landscape that is halfway between rust and terracotta. Or, to cut a long story short, a colour palette with temperament, just like the wild and beautiful climate and nature of Tasmania.
The colours chosen for the corporate identity are born of the sea, the beaches, the coasts and the environment’s exceptional ecosystem. A very dark and deep blue set against a landscape that is halfway between rust and terracotta. Or, to cut a long story short, a colour palette with temperament, just like the wild and beautiful climate and nature of Tasmania.