Proposition for Redesigning Fortune Cookie Factory Identity

A Little Bit of History

The Golden Gate Fortune Cookie Company is a fortune cookie company located along Jackson Street in the Chinatown neighborhood of San Francisco, California in the United States. It has been in business since 1962, and which still make fortune cookies the old-fashioned way, by hand.

A fortune cookie is a crisp cookie usually made from flour, sugar, vanilla, and sesame seed oil with a piece of paper inside, a “fortune”, on which is an aphorism, or a vague prophecy.

Here, in its birthplace, they make traditional fortune cookies, as well as chocolate flavored fortune cookies, almond cookies, and produce 20,000 cookies a day.

Fortune cookies are often served as a dessert in Chinese restaurants in the United States and other Western countries but are not a tradition in China.

Brief

[edgtf_dropcaps type=”normal” color=”” background_color=””]I[/edgtf_dropcaps] thought such a landmark as Golden Gate Fortune Cookie company needed a rebranding in order to get back its popularity (recently and become a product and a symbol that is cool to have on merchandise, for the messages to become something that you would put on a t-shirt to wear.

While staying true to its origin, Chinatown in San Francisco and never changing local factory.

Creative process

[edgtf_dropcaps type=”normal” color=”” background_color=””]I[/edgtf_dropcaps]n order to figure out the way in which direction to move forward, I had a look at the rival brands around US. Then I tried to see the common patterns they use and mistakes that have been made in their logos.

After that, I did the mind-mapping exercise in order to generate more ideas, find words, ideas, objects associated with my subject or a deeper meaning.

This exercise proved to me that the brand requires strong recognition by tourists, has to be easily recognizable by international public, memorable and modern, with a multifaceted element.

My next step was a mood board, or the style inspiration, where based on my prior research I gathered visuals that I associated with the brand and the ideas I would like to use in the redesign. I looked into some modern japanese design for its minimalism, some vintage signs to accentuate that Fortune Cookie Company is a company with a long history, at stamps for fonts reminding a stamp of a bag of cookies for example.

Following the visual step of the research, I went on to define the mission vision and value statements of the brand as these are the essentials of the brand positioning.

To remind you: “Brand strategy builds on a vision, is aligned with business strategy, emerges from a company’s values and culture, and reflects an in-depth understanding of the customer’s needs and perceptions.” Alena Wheeler

It is not an easy task to do, and you have understood the difference between Mision and Vision very clearly. The vision is how you see your brand in the future and explains why, whereas the mission supports the vision and  shows how are you going to get there and the purpose. The Value statement on the other hand, explains the core of the business, its belief and principles.

Design

[edgtf_dropcaps type=”normal” color=”” background_color=””]B[/edgtf_dropcaps]ased on the above research I have made 3 design options, all of them around the signature fortune cookie:

1. Inspired by a vintage drawing, this one displays all the useful information in the shape of the cookie.
2. Clean and simple option with a focus on the recognizable shape of the fortune cookie and the symbolic fortune telling message wrapped around as a frame.  
3. A playful and cartoonish version displays the cookie under a different angle with the name on the little paper in a bold classical font.

In the end, I have decided that the last option is more playful and memorable and chose to elaborate of the third one, where the message on the cookie can be a versatile element depending on where you place it: it can change the message.

This chosen option I applied on some merchandise, that I believe would sell well in the Factory store as a souvenir and also found a more recycling-friendly way to package the cookies.

 

 

Thank you for reading this and I hope that one day I will see some great and whimsy merchandise from Fortune Cookie Co. and I am always open for the sale of this project in case you are the representatives of the company and you like what I did here!