Context

Tess approached me in early 2019 about a startup she was trying to build called Daughters Market. The idea was to open a marketplace where female identifying makers and entrepreneurs can sell their handmade products.

The brand needed to be focused on empowering women business owners to take up space in the male dominated market. It should also attract feminist consumers looking to thoughtfully curate their private spaces with products made by women.

Questions

1. How do we ensure all female identifying individuals, like trans and non-binary folks, feel included and welcomed in our brand?

2. How do we address the complex connotations of the word “daughter” within the diverse community we hope to build?

3. How do we market effectively to that diverse community once it’s established?

Brand Philosophy

Take up space. Make it yours.

Many of our questions concern the messaging the brand should communicate to the community. Tess wanted the brand to feel radical in its motives, but also approachable to less revolutionary women.

The feeling of consciously having to take or reclaim space connects all women to one another. We fight daily against the world’s urge to shove us in a corner.

Daughters Market is a place where women don’t have to fight so hard because it’s a space reserved for them to sell their handmade products and buy quality wares to fill the spaces they’ve worked to claim.

The Logo

Take up all the space

With bold, tightly spaced letter forms, the logo is designed to feel like it fills as much space as possible. Letters can be pushed to the edges of the page when appropriate, making the wordmark the dominant element.

The counter in the letter ‘D’ is replaced with a forward pointing arrow that fills the space and pushes the eye through the word. The ‘D’ can stand on it’s own when featured in smaller settings.

Overall, the logo represents the unapologetic dominance of the Daughters brand.

Typography

I kept two ideas in mind as I chose the main typography for the wordmark:

1. Be bold

2. Fill space

We started the process with Gotham, but after deciding that purchasing the font would be too expensive, we went with Montserrat, which mimics the bold and balanced letterforms of Gotham.

Color

It started with blue and pink.

Because color is often so gendered, it was essential our palette cover the whole spectrum.

When we fill in the spectrum between blue and pink, we are left with a rainbow that allows the designer to give different marketing pieces a unique personality and emotional nuance.

Answers

Through the process, Tess and I were able to answer our three questions.

1. By using a broad color palette, the brand is able to appeal to the full spectrum of genders.

2. Reframe “daughters” as a movement that stands on the shoulders of our feminist mothers.

3. Create verbiage that appeals to both customers and vendors with a clear tagline:
   Take up space. Make it yours.