Imperfect sources ugly or otherwise unloved food that’s deemed unfit for traditional retailers, and delivers it for up to 30% less than the grocery store. Founded in 2015, the company had grown from its beginnings as an exclusively ‘wonky produce’ delivery service, to an online grocer.
In response to this expansion, a rebrand and repositioning was required. We built a scalable design system and a new identity to reflect this.
Design Director: David Z. Voll
Photography: Colette Krey
Before beginning, we spent time reflecting on what we wanted to retain and discard from our current logo. We’d built a lot of equity in the logo, and despite its shortcomings, some nostalgia and fondness were tied to the mark. A preference to keep produce as a core component of the logo was agreed upon, but typography was free to be overhauled.
With our positioning, vision, and market research finished, we got to work thinking about how our new brand would present visually. We started thinking about visual cues that represented sentiments of community, activism and sustainability.
With our new brand strategy wrapped and visual references collected, we started designing. We knew the word mark needed to retain charm and imperfection, so hand drawn type was generated to create custom rounded letterforms.
The logo solution is built from a hand-drawn bold sans-serif type that retains legibility when the mark is scaled. The wonky carrot is both an homage to the core of the business (ugly produce), and a nod to the company’s core value of ‘using the whole carrot’.
Hand generated texture was an important tool for differentiating ourselves from competitors. We wanted our visual assets to feel authentically us and created by hand. Reflecting our goal of delivering ‘groceries on a mission’, our visual assets needed to be imbued with this same activist sentiment.
Since the intricicies of Imperfects food delivery service needed to be explained multiple times across multiple channels, a library of branded icons were developed to facilitate visual storytelling.
Using our hand painted textures, we defined a textured ‘screenprinted’ illustration style. Harking back to our ‘Groceries on a Mission’ tag line, this style is referential of vintage screen-printed protest posters.
To support our grocery expansion, we needed to find a way to communicate to customers that much like our produce items, most of our grocery items have a food waste story of their own. A badging system was designed to help customers identify each products unique imperfection.
Imperfect’s private label program offered a unique chance to design brand ambassadors that would live on customers shelves and serve as long lasting impressions of the brand. Each product is designed to feel like a delightful gift, something that customers feel proud to display on their shelves.
Photography is a core part of Imperfects visual identity. As part of our larger rebrand, guidelines were built around photography style, subject styling and color usage.
Alongside our rebrand, the product and engineering teams were working hard to redesign our website. I helped support the team in building a UI design system for use across our new website.