Founded in Bangkok, Thailand, Gloyjai is a new design studio that offers beautiful, unique, and handcrafted quality goods. The Gloyjai product lies at the intersection of creativity and practicality, helping to bring design into everyday life.
Founded in 2017, the business is still evolving and changing direction - with plans to expand its offerings online as well as into other areas of design (including stationery, apparel, jewelry, and home goods) - but it was first founded as a decoupage studio.
Decoupage is a painstakingly detailed art - the slightest misstep will end up ripping through the tissue paper-thin material. Thus, the foundation of Gloyjai lies in the handcrafted - the intimacy and attention to detail of the handmade - which is juxtaposed with the modern, playful, and friendly approach the brand uses to present this age-old technique.
With plans to expand, designing for Gloyjai meant planning both for the present and future company. At the crux of the Gloyjai brand is a balance between the old and new - the combination of the handmade and traditional technique with modern design - as well as a balance between the traditionally-feminine prints of decoupage with a more contemporary, slightly quirky, and playful approach. The branding had to embody all of these contrasts, as well as its origin in decoupage, without upstaging the products and also remaining versatile enough to adapt well for any future endeavors.
To reference the handmade, a hand-drawn ligature was designed and encased in a circle to reference a wax seal, embodying both the idea of the bespoke as well as maintaining a personable and authentic approach to design - the idea that behind every product is a person rather than a faceless corporation or machine. The lines of the logo were kept relatively consistent and combined with lots of negative space in order to impart a cleaner and more contemporary feel.
In order to account for any future plans and expansions, the logomark was combined with a primary and secondary typeface in order to create a more versatile, responsive logo system. The logomark was paired with Axis (a sans-serif whose geometric shapes and relatively low x-height work well with the logomark and impart a dose of playful personality) and a secondary typeface, Brandon Grotesque (another geometric sans-serif with a lower x-height that provides a more functional use but, with its slightly rounded edges, still pairs well with both Axis and the logomark).
A lot of decoupage patterns are quite feminine, so the branding needed to relate to that without becoming too twee or overly sweet whilst also retaining a playful and modern approach. Traditional feminine colors typically include pink or red; however, pink typically veers too feminine and red too aggressive.
Instead, a bold punch of orange was combined with a peachy pink and touches of gold in order to create a color palette that paired well with feminine prints but still allowed the brand to be playful and quirky while remaining sophisticated, welcoming without being too soft, and playful and bold without being too aggressive. Spare gold details add another layer of sophistication and modernity as well as providing a tactile quality to the branding.