What better way to brand a sweet treat than through a bespoke typeface that literally looks good enough to eat? Yes, the rhyme was intentional.
Beirut-based food processing company Gandour founded its baked goods range Yamama in the 1980s, and since then, the brand has established itself as a family favourite across the Middle East. By leveraging Gandour’s 150 years of expertise in confectionery, the sub-brand garnered a reputation across the Middle East for providing great quality cakes at affordable prices. However, the competition on the shelf has recently stepped up a notch.
With new entries from local and global players alike threatening Yamama’s coveted position in the market, it was definitely the right time for a refresh. While it has managed to keep pace through a combination of value, nostalgia, and long-standing salience, it lacked appeal to the new generation.
That was until Clerkenwell-based design studio Derk&Eric stepped in. The design team aimed to bolster Yamama’s credibility, setting it apart from competitors as a trusted, family-run business, while ensuring the brand’s visuals were unique and distinctive.
“We love working with brands that haven’t yet looked their best,” says Derek&Eric managing partner Jon Gibbs. “Yamama had all the history and heritage but wasn’t expressing it in a way that connected to today’s consumer, and since there’s a lot of love for the brand, we wanted to recreate that emotional connection through the design.”
Gibbs notes that a key challenge when redesigning a local jewel is “getting the balance of modernising the brand whilst retaining recognition with consumers who have bought it for years”. To avoid straying too far from what loyal consumers know and love, Derek&Eric worked closely with the local team, ensuring that the consumer was at the forefront of all design decisions.
The studio found that connection has always been at the core of Yamama’s offering, particularly between parent and child, where shared cakes bring a little joy. Gibbs explains how they used this idea as a foundation for the identity, visible from the “smooth and creamy infinite pattern” of the Y to the addition of the word ‘love’ in the brand’s refined and modernised logotype.
“The new style is expressed with colourful energy and generous abundance, building layers of excitement on top of the refreshed blue background”, says Gibbs.
The studio commissioned type guru Rob Clarke to work on a bespoke (and delicious) logotype for Yamama. The smooth, looping letterforms of the new typeface take inspiration from the piped cream that Yamama’s cakes are famous for, giving the brand an ownable and distinct asset to leverage in brand communication and on pack.
For the colour palette, Derek&Eric took a gentle approach, keeping it familiar but fresh to retain some of the brand equity that Yamama has built up over the years.
The studio also designed the packaging for the confectionary brand. Gibbs explains that the cakes have “an interconnecting pattern inspired by the creamy logo form that creates an endless creamy pattern when stacked together”.
According to Gibbs, the Yamama brand has grown since the relaunch of the new identity, which points to the success of the design work in attracting new buyers.
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