Living Twig

Insect Lore’s UK division is able to sell living walking sticks while it’s illegal to sell them in the US. The reason being that walking sticks are a common pest. Strange, since the US division can sell mealworms/darkling beetles with no restrictions. Ok, this is totally beside the point… the point being I was given the challenge of updating their antiquated logo and packaging.

 

Ack! Those walking stick characters look like poo with legs. The challenge here was to align it with our unified Insect Lore look, and make it friendly for 10 languages. This looks like a job for illustration!

First off, I created illustrations to show how the kit worked, independent of any copy:

Next came the logo. 

Sometimes I get on a kick and create the whole logo with textures and all, and realize that I’ve been going the wrong way the whole time. Although this logo has some punch, other than reading “Living Twig”, it says nothing. Back to the drawing board.

Ok, this idea had some merit. It was approved by the powers-that-be, so I finished it up:

As you can see, I stayed pretty true to the hand drawn look of the lettering, but modified the leaf “shield” behind to help it sit on any colored background and look good.

The children on the front are from two separate photos, and we didn’t have a shot of a habitat with walking sticks crawling around in it, so that took a bit of photoshopping to get what we needed. I added the obligatory choking hazard label, odds and ends, a little fizz, and there you have it, a fresh updated look to a very cool live insect kit!

Not available in the US, but you can get it in the UK here.

Tagged as: Illustration, Insect Lore, Living Twig, logo, package design, production, walking stick