Salt & Light Orthodontics
Creating Minimalist Tea Shop Vibes for a SoCal Orthodontics Practice
Tools Used:
Illustrator, Photoshop
I was asked to create an aesthetic for Salt & Light Orthodontics, a new orthodontic office that will serve the Irvine community and its surrounding areas. I leaned heavily into modern tea shop interiors, succulents and moss, and alchemical symbols as inspiration to create a minimalist brand identity that the client could use across various applications. Designed on behalf of Wonderist Agency.
Inspiration
Drawing the name from a Bible quote, these clients came to our branding discovery meeting with images of modern boba shops, light and bright interiors.
Style Elements
The clients tended to gravitate towards earthy color palettes and clean, crisp lines.
For typography, we moved forward with the geometric Josefin Sans font family paired with the neutral Open Sans Regular for the paragraph text.
For color palettes, we explored a range of soft pastels mixed with earthy neutrals, and ultimately landed on a palette inspired by mossy greens, soft and cool succulents, and peachy bronze shades and tints for accents.
The Icon
For the icon, I wanted to create a graphic that would reflect the practice's unique name but would be easily scalable and abstract. In my research, I discovered that ancient alchemical symbols that predated modern chemistry utilized a circle bisected with a line to stand for "salt." While there was no exact symbol for "light," the symbol for "air" also involved a horizontal line, so I decided to use that recurring element to unify the two into a unique symbol.
The final Logo
After iterating detailed graphics with circles, lines, and triangles, the client decided on the simplest form of this idea: a circle (symbolizing the "sun" and "light"), with a triangle placed over the circle where the apex hits the circle's center (symbolizing "air," or the "light" quality.) The triangle overlaps and cuts through the circle lines to create a smile curve.
To preserve the salt symbol we discovered earlier in the process, I created a wordmark-focused variation that places the wordmark in the middle of a circle. This echoes the format of the alchemical symbol for "salt," with the circle encapsulating a horizontal line.
