MUTA is an apparel brand that I made this year to use as practice for my design abilities, and to see how far I could go when creating a full company and product line from basically nothing.
For this brand I knew I had wanted a vibe that was simple and bold, but also fun and playful at the same time. I tried to build a wide range of designs to work with, bringing in different images, messages, and styles on a good range of merchandise
Starting with the logo, I had the idea of a heart-like icon, to represent care and tranquility. While playing around with the heart shape, I landed on this fox or cat figure. It is also fun, cute and an interesting image to play with. I was deciding between many colors when I and landed on a nice blue shade, 436bb4. It pops on white and black and also isn’t too loud of a color. Once the logo was set, the rest of the branding came into place very easily. I found Sigmar to use as a header font and as the official MUTA company word-mark, because it is as bold as I want and offers some unique shapes in their letter forms. Pairing Sigmar with something was tough, as I wanted a font that I know could contrast the header well, but also stay legible. Eventually, I landed on Myriad Pro Regular, which I believe accomplishes this feat.
For my MUTA merch designs, I also wanted imagery that popped in a few different ways. Something striking was good, that’s pretty much the goal for each item. The board, for example, is a familiar image but tuned to an infrared color, jumping off of a background that is void of anything. The MUTA bag uses the company logo and name in their normal colors, but paired with a nice beige it stands out as a color combo.
