Ivy Avenue
Ivy Avenue is a fictional jewellery brand I created to allow me to experiment with designing original packaging and advertising. I challenged myself further to try and combine jewellery design with elements of nature, hence the name ‘Ivy Avenue’. I had never worked on a jewellery-based design project before either, so it was exciting new territory for me to work in.
Ivy is seen as a symbol of friendship because of the tenacity of its attachment - nothing can separate Ivy from its host once it has embraced it, similar to real friendships - however it can also be seen as a symbol of affection, as the tendrils are often in a spiral form, representing love and desire. It is these historic symbolisms which encouraged me to choose Ivy out of all other plants and specifically link it to my fictional brand, as jewellery is typically what people gift to their loved ones, whether it be friends, family or partners.
Until this project, I had yet to work with a solitary green colour scheme and with Ivy Avenue featuring naturistic elements, it provided the perfect opportunity for me to do so. I had already experimented designing with natural colours in Leslie & Vale’s Autumn-inspired branding, however I leant more towards the warm reds and oranges of Autumn, so for this project I decided to be completely green forward - plus, Ivy leaves are naturally green anyway, so it was the most appropriate colour scheme to progress with!
I wanted to somehow incorporate an Ivy leaf into the typographic logo, without it appearing out of place, so I extended the serif of the ‘y’ and altered it to represent a vine. From there, I constructed a silhouette of an Ivy leaf and attached it to the end of the vine, utilising it to separate the two words from one another without needing a massive gap between them.