ROHIT SINGHIndependent Designer

WorkBrand Identity

Fenn & Tallow

An identity for an imagined maker of wax and soap, built from a single, oversized ampersand.

Discipline
Brand identity & logo
Year
2026
Identity board for the fictional maker Fenn & Tallow: a letterhead, a round tin lid, business cards, and a wrapped bar of soap on a dark ground.

01Context

Fenn & Tallow is a fictional small-batch maker of candles and soap, working from one room with old-fashioned materials: tallow, beeswax, lye, and ash.

Handmade goods have a very familiar visual language by now: kraft paper, a hand-drawn sprig, a rubber stamp. I wanted to see whether something made by hand could look assured without looking rustic.

02Objective

Create an identity that could work at the size of a wax stamp and the size of a market banner, with few enough parts that a two-person workshop could apply it themselves.

Creative direction

Two materials. One join.

The name already contains the idea: two things joined together. So the ampersand does the work of a logo, set large in a soft italic serif, standing alone wherever there is not enough room for the name.

The palette comes straight from the workshop: tallow, soot, a burnt ember orange, and the gray-green of dried sage.

03Design approach

  1. 01

    Start at the smallest size

    A mark stamped into wax loses every fine detail. I tested the ampersand at twelve millimeters before deciding anything about how it would look large.

  2. 02

    One typeface, used two ways

    Roman for the plain fact, italic for the feeling: “Wet” and “Stone”. That single rule gives every label its rhythm without any extra ornament.

  3. 03

    A range you can read from across a room

    Each scent has one ground color and one two-word name, set the same size on every product, so that a shelf reads as a family.

Six lockups of the Fenn & Tallow logo: wordmark, seal, monogram, and stacked versions on tallow, soot, ember, and sage grounds.
The lockups: wordmark, seal, monogram, and stacked.
Construction drawing of the Fenn & Tallow ampersand, showing its circle, axis and baseline.
Construction of the ampersand, and its minimum sizes.
Three pale candles burning on a dark surface, wax pooling at their bases.
Reference for the mood of the material: warm, plain, and a little imperfect.
Three round candle-tin lids in the Fenn & Tallow range, each with a two-word scent name.
Candle lids. One type size, and one ground per scent.
Four bars of soap in paper wrappers with colored belly bands, set at staggered heights.
Soap wrappers. The belly band changes while the paper stays the same.

04Typography & color

The system

  • Tallow

    Paper and wrappers

    #EADFC8

  • Soot

    Type and dark ground

    #211C17

  • Ember

    The ampersand

    #B9502A

  • Dried sage

    Secondary range

    #6F7A59

  • Instrument Serif

    Name and product titles

    Fenn & Tallow

  • Instrument Serif Italic

    Second word, always

    Wet Stone

  • IBM Plex Mono

    Weights and small print

    SOAP / 120 G

05Final design

Where it landed.

The final system has very few rules, which is deliberate. Roman then italic. One color per scent. The ampersand when space runs out. A small workshop could keep that going without needing me on call.

As with all my concept studies, Fenn & Tallow is an invented business, so the identity has not been produced or used in the market. It shows the way I approach building a brand from a single clear idea.

Photography from Unsplash: Sixteen Miles Out.

Next project

Long Take

Poster & campaign design

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