To start my branding process of Counting Cake, I first had to refresh myself on the branding process. I did research on what I needed to define in my target market, brand personality, and how to take my findings and turn that information into a brand that fits the research. To define my target market. I did research on other healthy dessert blogs, took note of the types of people who followed them, and begun to dive deeper into breaking that target market down into 3 main personas. After my research, I took note of my findings and creating a general target audience: 

Age: 20-45

Gender: Women

Location: US 

Personas

From there, I create my three personas, Olivia, Alexis, and Melissa, that represented the main groups of the target market. I designed these personas to resemble a scrapbook/recipe book or recipe card, with each persona representing a different type of user.

The first is Olivia, who is a college-aged student who wants to follow a healthy lifestyle. Being surrounded by healthy eating, Olivia is interested in dieting but has too big of a sweet tooth to go cold turkey. She wants to keep a level of sweetness in her diet so that she doesn’t miss it too much and end up eating sweets she will feel guilty about. Olivia is new to healthy eating and cooking for herself. She is used to her parent’s cooking or cafeteria food, so any recipe is a new experience for her. Olivia wants easy-to-follow, quick sweet treats that keep her feeling healthy and happy with her choices.

The next persona is Alexis, who is a 32 year old, busy stay-at-home mom of four children, ages two, four, six, and eight. She is an experienced baker who loves to spend time with her kids in the kitchen, teaching them tips and tricks as they join as helping hands. Alexis loves this time with her kids and wants to keep their baking adventures regular in their routine, but she worries that too many baked sweets can be bad for her kids. Instead, she wants to prioritize healthy desserts, that she can still bake with her kids, but feel less guilty about. She can handle any level of expertise require for a recipe and is always looking for something new, fun, and interesting to try. 

Lastly, there is Melissa, she is a middle-aged lawyer, who spends her freetime enjoying a range of activities. While she loves her job, she finds it can be stressful, so she likes to balance it out with a focus on a healthy lifestyle. Melissa enjoys running, yoga, hiking, and more, and she is just as dedicated to her active lifestyle as she is to her diet. She is not new to healthy eating and cooking her own food, but is not an expert baker either. Melissa is looking for new recipes to try and regular content she can follow, so that she doesn’t need to go out of her way to search for recipes each week. 

Brand Personality

After defining the target market and personas, I moved on to defining the brand personality. I used the information I learned in my research about what the target market is looking for and connecting to, and from there, built up who this brand is at its core. 

Archetype: Creator

Goal: Have a relatable brand that the consumers can see themselves in and find advice, direction, and enjoyment in their sweet way to keep off the pounds.

Traits: Creative, Honest, Relatable

Voice: Down to earth, cheerful, encouraging, helpful, mentoring

Tagline: Counting cake instead of mistakes.

Mood Board

From there, I began to build up my mood board, gathering inspiration from images, color, and fonts. This mood board will be the baseline that I move forward with building the branding from. I will draw inspiration from here and experiment, working with these colors and fonts. I wanted to keep the colors light to show the fun, lightness of the brand, and what it stands for, being light on the calories! I will continue to experiment from here and these colors and fonts are far from being the final version.

Continuing on in the branding process, I plan to keep researching best branding practices, the competitors, experimenting with colors, fonts, and more.