One fictional client, taken apart from brief to press. Then the rules and a builder for writing up your own work.
Fictional client, labeled
10 stages
Case study builder
THE CASE / HALFMOON BAKERY
A bakery that opened too late.
Fictional client. Halfmoon Bakery, its neighborhood, its hours and every number here are invented to show the structure of a case study. Nothing was produced and no results are claimed.
Illustrative research: who is open when, on one block.
The bread was ready at 6. The door opened at 7.
Night shifts end around 6. Those workers walk past the shop to the platform.
Nothing nearby opened before 7. That hour belonged to nobody.
Decision: recommend opening the door at 6 before designing anything. The best idea in this project isn’t visual. The design’s job is to tell people about it.
03
The idea.
Sell the hour, not the bread.
Every bakery says fresh. Only one is open at 6. The hour is the difference, so the hour becomes the brand: the time on every piece, the reason to stop, the thing regulars call it.
Test it: can the idea be said in one sentence, and does it rule things out? It rules out wheat, flour clouds and the word “artisan.” Good.
04
Three routes.
Three directions, shown at the same fidelity so the choice is about the idea.
A / Clockwork
Clock-face mark, time as the headline. Carries the idea directly and works in one color.
Chosen
B / Night Shift
Moon phases and a serif. Lovely, but it says “late night,” and the shop closes at 2 p.m.
Killed: wrong hour
C / Plain Bread
All type, all facts. Honest and cheap, but it looks like every other sign on the block.
Killed: invisible
Why show the losers: the routes you killed explain the one you kept. Show them at equal polish, or the choice looks rigged.
05
The mark.
At 6:00 the hands line up and split the face into a half moon.
The mark is a clock stopped at six. At that hour the hands form one vertical line, which splits the face into a half moon. The name and the hour turn out to be the same picture.
Decision: keep the hands at 6:00 everywhere. No other time, no animated hands spinning on the website. The mark only ever says one thing.
Horizontal lockup.Small-size test. The simplified version is a separate file, not a scaled-down one.
06
The system.
Color
Night blueThe field. Most surfaces.
Crust orangeThe only accent. The time, and the moon.
FlourType on night blue; paper.
Halfmoon’s colors belong to Halfmoon. KIT stays pink, blue and yellow; the client palette only appears inside these frames.
Type
6:00 A.M.
Condensed sans for times and headlines (shown in Anton).
Bread’s out. Your train’s in nine.
A readable serif for menus and lines (shown in Instrument Serif).
Voice
Say “Bread’s out.”
Say “Open at 6. Every day.”
Never “Artisanal goodness, baked with love.”
Never exclamation points. It’s 6 a.m.
Rule that holds it together: every piece shows the time. If a layout has no time on it, it isn’t Halfmoon yet.
07
Applications.
Platform poster, 24 × 36 in. Placed one block before the station, where people still have time to turn.Window decal. The one piece people see at 6 a.m. in the dark, so it’s the lightest thing on the street.Paper bag. One color on stock white bags: the cheapest run, and still unmistakable.
Three-frame story. A countdown that only pays off at 6:00.
Decision: placement over volume. Two posters in the right spot beat twelve around the neighborhood.
08
Production.
Keyline for the 3 in bag-closure label.
Poster: 4/0 on 100 lb gloss text, 0.125 in bleed, 40 copies. Hard proof, because the night blue goes muddy if it isn’t checked.
Bags: 1/0 in night blue on stock white bags. The moon half is a 70% tint, so it needs no second ink.
Labels: 3 in round, die-cut, full bleed, kept inside the safe circle.
Decal: printed in reverse on clear vinyl and applied inside the glass, so it survives the window washer.
Why it’s in the case: production choices are design choices. The one-color bag is the difference between a budget that works and one that doesn’t.
