Art Licensing Unlocked
The signature online course of reknowned licensing artist Krissy Mast, Art Licensing Unlocked is at the forefront of educating aspiring artists on how to unlock the career and incomes of their dreams.
Krissy reached out about a brand glow up for her course, which she felt was no longer completely aligned with her content and the level of quality she was seeking to reflect. After a thorough brand workshop, we landed on a solid creative direction which would include a totally custom handlettered logo, spot illustrations, patterns, type styling and much more.
Feminine and polished
Reflects a higher-tier investment and the valuable course material within
Signature Krissy style: vibrant, uplifing, and within her recognizable color universe
Keep what’s working
Artistic, playful and fun
Able to be expanded and enhanced with Krissy’s own illustrations
Brand Ethos
Bettering the Lettering
The new, handlettered ALU logo reflects the brand’s personality: polished, feminine, artistic and authoritative.
We kept Krissy’s signature pink key from the original branding, but crafted a new, streamlined version that would work well within the new, totally custom interlocking script.
Every brand starts as a series of sketches on paper – where all the good thinking gets done. Once a good concept was locked in, I took it over to the ipad for a final round of polishing.
Digital sketching allows me to work and iterate quickly, which is helpful when playing around with interlocking letters. Once the custom lettered mark is 95% polished, I move it over to Adobe Illustrator for vectorizing and finalization.
Before & After
“She took my vision and made it into a visual wonderland.”
Krissy Mast / Art Licensing Unlocked
The nature of online courses is that they live 95% in a digital-only world. We worked to set Krissy up with tools and ideas for every touchpoint her students and potential enrollees would interact with her brand, and made sure there were alternate marks that would work well in very small environments like slide deck footers and social media icons.
Designed for Digital
Let’s face it – Art Licensing Unlocked is a long name! When a brand has that many letters and/or words, it’s tough to scale down to the small spaces a brand shows up: social icons, slide decks, website footers, favicons... so an alternate monogram or icon is often necessary for those contexts.
We lettered a custom monogram for ALU that could be used at small sizes, such as the instagram profile icon and course slide decks.
Do it for the (mono)gram
We created a set of spirit marks for ALU that would be a fun and unique way to express the brand without overusing the primary logo. These were designed with stickers, keychains, website sales pages, and social media graphics in mind. And maybe one day even cool swag like hats, patches and tees!
That’s the Spirit
Krissy has a recognizable style and color palette within the art licensing universe, so it made sense to take these Top Hits and slightly adjust them to balance the palette and land on a robust set of dark, mid, bright and light tones. This ensures the palette can be layered and paired in varied and creative ways.
bright future
Because of the overlap of the art licensing industry with surface pattern design, and the fact that many of ALU’s students are pattern designers (not to mention Krissy herself), it only made sense to include a set of custom patterns in ALU’s toolkit.
A varied set of patterns from simple and geometric to highly detailed can be endlessly recolored within ALU’s palette, scaled up and down for max impact, and used a full or low opacity to either shout or recede. Key and lock motifs are woven throughout to delight students, and make a big brand impact wherever they show up,
Repeat After Me
A capsule set of illustrations was just the ticket to accent website sales pages, email and social graphics, and course material. Because ALU is truly a treasure chest of knowledge, we created some on-theme spot graphics, as well as more keys and locks, and banners to drop text in.
The illustrations aren’t meant to imitate Krissy’s unique style; but rather, to provide a solid foundation and background for where she adds her own personal touches.
keyed in
The initial brand lacked a cohesive typographic voice, so we worked to create a strong palette of type that could unify ALU’s messaging across marketing channels and within the course.
The fonts help create a friendly, fun, and approachable tone of voice for all the brand messaging.
just my type
A revamped set of templates ensures that social media messaging looks fabulous and consistent every single time.
Let’s Get Social
Once students are enrolled in ALU, they have access to the exclusive Keyholders Community, where they can interact with fellow students and Krissy, and get insider coaching, critiques, and advice.
This special badge (also a brand-within-a-brand) helps the community feel official and exclusive, and can be used for future goodies like stickers and patches.
Key to My Art
Let’s work together. If you’re looking for a stellar brand, or have a design project in mind, spill the (magic) beans by clicking below 👇🏻 and tell me all about it.