Clinical Research Coordinator by day and Candlemaker by night, Alyssa Ciampaglia created Bitch Druid Candles in 2020 as a way to pass time during the early days of the pandemic. What started as a fun hobby has turned into a burgeoning business that operates largely through Instagram and Etsy. Ciampaglia loves to make candles inspired by fantasy and horror movies, music, and tasty treats. She loves collaborating with local artists to sell stickers that accompany her candles. Bitch Druid Candles have been on semi-hiatus due to a disabling ACL injury Ciampaglia suffered in the Fall of last year. Now that she’s healed, she’s looking to add some momentum back into her passion project through a brand new website and some potential re-branding.
I asked Alyssa to name some candle brands she felt were competitive with her. I looked at all of them and a few more candle brands that I felt go after similar demographics. I looked at candle companies of various sizes, some local to Philadelphia, some not. Some of the smaller companies had less developed websites and less of an established brand identity.
Using this competitor analysis I divided the features into “Need to Have”, “Nice to Have”, and “Maybe Later”. I started to brainstorm the kinds of features that would help Ciamaglia’s brand stand out.
For this project, I interviewed Ciampagila about her brand goals and inspirations. Because this isn’t Ciampagila’s main source of income she’s been able to cultivate a niche audience. I had Ciampaglia tell me about some brands she admires as well as artists that contribute to her ideal branding. From this interview I created a mood board using images from some of Ciampaglia’s favorite instagram accounts, including her own.
I started off this process by testing color schemes and doodling potential logos. The biggest words to describe the Bitch Druid aesthetic are “Cute”, “Creepy”, and “Funny”. Honing in on it even more, I think Ciampaglia’s interest in Hags as a unique jumping off point for the logo (Ciampaglia is a big Dungeons and Dragon’s fan- hence the “Druid”). I found some great images of a sculpture of a witch’s hand on google images and drew it on my ipad. I then converted it into a vector and tried a lot of different color schemes till I found one that looked good and made sense for the brand.
While Bitch Druid is “creepy” and niche, that’s not meant to alienate potential customers. It’s important that “Cute” was well reflected in the visual branding. I selected 2 friendly sans-serif fonts to go along with the friendly witch asthetic.
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