Purrr-fect
Packaging
Branding and Packaging Case Study
Anyone attending Cal Poly Pomona who is part of the Visual Communication Design department is familiar with the oh-so-popular cat, Bluebell. Bluebell’s likeness was implemented in the packaging I had the privilege of designing in the Spring of 2025. The packaging design was part of a larger project that aimed to bring a minimal viable ice cream product to a fast pitch competition and eventually to market.
Customer Discovery
The team creating the product comprised Camille McCurry, the Chief Formulation Officer, Marina Hernandez, the Chief Technical Officer, Ceren Unal, the Chief Operations Officer, Gabriel Arrezola as the Chief Marketing Officer, and me as the Chief Design Officer. Before starting on the ice cream making and its branding process, the team had to understand the audience the ice cream was marketed to, that being the students of Cal Poly Pomona. Through the customer discovery process, we discovered that the main points students would like to see in an ice cream product were that it was student-innovated and student-made, and indulgent rather than healthy. The formulation and business elements of the project were in the hands of my teammates, whereas I needed to focus on designing the logo and the message we were trying to convey.
Logo Sketches
Keeping in mind the fact that this was an ice cream product and that students were interested in the student-innovation element, the team landed on the name Scoop Theory, and I began the sketching process. After mind-mapping, I created almost 100 logo sketches that represented either of the focuses or combined them both. After voting from graphic designers and my teammates, we decided to move forward with two logos, 57 and 60.
Two Logos
To further develop the logos, two different paths were required. One focused on the classic mom-and-pop ice cream shop logo, representing a classic feel, and focused on the comfort aspect of the ice cream. The other was leaning into the logotype direction, serving a more modern look. To achieve the classic look for logo 60, I researched different typefaces that emulated the classic ice cream shop typeface, landing on one appropriately named Ice Cream. For the ice cream in logo 57 to emulate the letter O, the typeface needed to have rounded overall shapes and counters to achieve a seamless blend. The typeface that was perfect for this was Omnes Bold, and its type-pairing was Avenir Book. After another round of voting, logo 60 was chosen and further refined.
Final Logo
To understand the refinements of the logo 60, a breakdown of the elements is required. The main imagery in the logo is a lightbulb and an ice cream cone, reflecting the innovation and ice cream elements of our product. The customer discovery trait of students wanting an indulgent ice cream is represented through the typeface with its curly terminals and medium to high contrast. Despite this being a premium ice cream, it should still be approachable, leading to the choice of softer colors. The logo as a whole is maximalist, a feature I noticed present in ice cream parlors. After testing different colors, shapes of ice cream, and the background behind the logo and its typography, one single logo came to fruition, and I was able to move forward with the packaging.
Packaging Ideation
While the logo development was ongoing, the formulation team was hard at work using the customer discovery results to determine an ice cream flavor, and the business team was working on names for the particular business model we would be using. To help determine what the flavor should be, we looked to popular ice cream flavors and to what makes Cal Poly Pomona so special. A premium flavor that is also relatively popular is cheesecake and chocolate. One of the many amazing parts of the Cal Poly Pomona campus is our many animals, whether they be wild, the koi in the Japanese Garden, or our very own Arabian horses. A beloved campus character that has been rising in popularity is the grey cat that roams around near Building 13 and the Japanese Garden, Bluebell. With this in mind, the ice cream name “Bluebell’s Cat Tracks” was decided on, modeled after the ice cream flavor “Moose Tracks.” Rather than go with a chocolate cheesecake ice cream, the new focus was a blueberry cheesecake ice cream with inclusions. The final ice cream product I was creating packaging for was a “Blueberry Cheesecake-flavored Ice Cream with Cheesecake Bites and Blueberry and Fudge Swirls.”
Packaging Design
Given the constrained timeline between the start of the project and the fast pitch competition, the sketching phase for the packaging was not as intensive as the logo. Since the illustration would need to be scaled to accommodate different ice cream container sizes, the packaging design was a vector and made in Adobe Illustrator. Looking at reference images, courtesy of Bluebell’s unofficial Instagram account, cat.polypomona, I created a graphic that can be adapted to any size that features an adorable recreation of the famous CPP cat. The packaging also features paw prints that lead from the illustration of Bluebell to the ice cream name and description, allowing the eyes to follow that path. The two iterations of the packaging I made were for the small single-serving cup we were serving the ice cream in and the gallons we were scooping the ice cream from.
Preparing for the Event
Instead of creating labels for around 100 of the single-serving cups that would be thrown away, I created stickers that people could take home that display the team’s logo or the illustration of Bluebell. Digital mockups were created with the ice cream product inside the packaging to display what it could be if it were to be professionally manufactured. In preparation for the fast pitch event, part of the Student Innovation Idea Lab’s 10th anniversary celebration, I printed out the packaging to put on one of the ice cream single-serving cups, along with the gallon strip. I also printed out stickers, and all three of these products were cut on a Silhouette precision cutter, a tool I had never used before. Learning how to use this tool was a valuable lesson that I’m sure will come in handy later in my design career. Lastly, I created a brand identity guideline for the logo. With all these elements being ready, the team was ready to present to the jury of experts.
Final Presentation and Results
At the fast-pitch event, we presented our branding, business model, and formulation information to a panel of judges before distributing our products to the event attendees. The ice cream and stickers were a big hit, with many people coming back for seconds and others sharing the stickers with their friends. When it came to announcing the winners, we were on the edge of our seats. We won! The team won the grand prize of $1,500 and the opportunity to represent Cal Poly Pomona in the CSU-wide startup competition.
I’m extremely proud of the team and everything we were able to accomplish in three months. We started confused and directionless, but by relying on each other and referring to our mentors, we were able to create a minimal viable product with a set business model and thought-out branding identity. I’m grateful for the opportunity to participate in such a competition and am thankful for the lessons I learned along the way.