Li-Lac Chocolates is Manhattan's oldest chocolate house and a Greenwich Village icon since 1923. For the past 90 years, Li-Lac has continued to make old-world chocolates in small batches using time-honored techniques, original recipes, and the finest ingredients. In 2011 the store was bought by a new owner and he came to okellydesign to help revitalize the Li-Lac brand.
The previous identity was created by the founders and as such, we were not allowed to significantly alter it as part of the purchasing contracts. However, it was clearly not suitable for contemporary usages in print and online, and there were a number of oddities that needed addressing. The type was a stock scriptface (Kunstler Script) that had been horizontally and vertically scaled to fit within a circle. The supporting text was ITC Souvenir, a font from the 1920s when the store was founded, but very much of its time. I redrew the typeface to work more properly with less scaling, and carefully opened up the stroke weights (hand drawn for each curve) to ensure that the face wouldn't break up when used at the small sizes that it would most commonly be seen at. After much research and presentations, we settled on H&FJs Hoefler Text to replace Souvenir as the primary serif typeface for Li-Lac Chocolates, with Parachutes Affair replacing Kunstler script for all script uses. H&FJs Whitney was chosen to serve as the san-serif supporting typeface for the brand.
The overall elements were then realigned and balanced to help the identity maintain legibility, and the artwork was created at 100% (1inch diameter) which was felt to be the most common usage size. This way I could know the exact size of the typography and the line stokes and thus ensure accurate printing and rendering onscreen. A suite of supporting logotypes were also created with lockups for the tagline artwork, supporting tagline, secondary messaging, url, and brand promise, along with color iterations for each.
A full color palette was created around the core brand purples (also rechosen), with lovely chocolatey browns as the secondary colors, and poppy tertiary palette based on their famous chocolates ranges. These elements were then supported with a graphic palette of floral textures, old-style photographic bases for images, a marble texture for the store information base (chocolates are made on marble counters), and vintage frames for the chocolates in the advertising, all of which combined to show the pedigree of the brand in a modern way. The main adverts were created for display in Grand Central Station (NYC) where Li-Lac also have a store.
A suite of print materials were also designed for giveaways and generally promoting the business, including bag-stuffers (to go in each purchased box), postcards, business cards and stationery. I also designed the awning for the Jane Street store, utilizing the primary brand colors to catch the eye in this famous (and historically preserved) neighborhood.
Lastly, I created a full set of wireframes for the Li-Lac website, but this was not brought to fruition unfortunately due to budgetary constraints. The site was to be designed around the seasonal and weekly promotions that Li-Lac have, and to showcase their hundreds of different types of chocolates and unique moldings. The site was to integrate with the sales system in the factory so that orders could be processed more quickly, with gift cards, mailing labels and invoices being generated automatically via a printer in the factory which would have significantly increased efficiency. The ordering section would have included customer accounts to increase repeat business and streamline the ordering and tracking process.