New Logo for Sweet Element Cakes!

After a two week design process, 139 entries by 28 designers, and a lot of back and forth on design concepts, I’m very happy to reveal the new logo for Sweet Element Cakes!

One of my fellow friends in the wedding industry, a fabulous wedding & portrait photographer, Meridith Desmond, recommended the site 99designs.com to me over lunch last month.  After researching a number of other options for logo design with independent design firms, I thought that the crowd sourcing idea behind 99designs was a perfect fit for me.  As a creative person, it’s tricky to know if you’ll gel with a specific designer, and I loved the opportunity to interact with so many designers concurrently.  I have to say, it was an fun twist to be the one writing the design brief after working for so many years in the ad industry on the agency side where I’d be reading the brief written by others!

So why the change in logo design?  Well, truth be told, I’ve never explored professional logo design for the entirety of Sweet Element, as Mr. Sweet Element and I came up with the initial concept of the theobromine molecule way back in 2004 when Sweet Element was born.  We thought theobromine was fitting at the time, as it is found in chocolate, and most of the sweets I was making at the time were chocolate based.

However, like many businesses, Sweet Element has evolved over the past eight years.  Initially, I thought that I’d be creating cookies, chocolates, cakes, and catering full dessert bars with many of the french pastries I learned how to make at The French Culinary Institute.  However, as the years flew by, and I eventually left my dual life behind me, saying adieu to my corporate desk job, and hello to full time entrepreneurship, I started really honing in on what I enjoyed most in pastry – cakes!  I found that creating custom cakes allowed me to be the most creative and artistic, whereas creating chocolate, cookies, and other pastries made me feel like I was working in a factory.  And while I excel at production and assembly – it just didn’t seem to fill the creative void that I longed to fill after so many years behind a desk.

So, after a few years in my studio, working almost solely* on cakes, I thought it would be fitting to do a little bit of re-branding to really showcase that Sweet Element is primarily a custom cake company!  I absolutely adore the new logo, and think that it’s a perfect blend of elegance, whimsy and modern design, which lines up perfectly with the overall style of a Sweet Element cake!

Also, to satiate the ever present kid in me, I also had the winning designer come up with various “toppers” to this design that can easily be interchanged for the holidays and other special occasions.

Here’s a sneak peak at the summer version:

*Full disclaimer: Sweet Element still makes cookies and chocolates for select clients that remember the sweets of the early years as well as corporate gifts during the winter holidays!