Back in the beginning of the year, I had the privilege of rebranding Koko Kai Coconut Yogurt, the only non dairy coconut yogurt made locally in Hawaii. This yogurt is truly delicious.

Koko Kai’s mission is to “craft their coconut yogurts with integrity and principles by sourcing ingredients from fair trade farmers, as well as supporting the environment and our local community by putting people and the planet first.” They also offer a recycling program with their glass jars, and donate to environmental groups that help keep our islands (and planet) cleaner, greener, and pollution free.

My job was to create a new logo/visual identity that would express all the above, as well as show off Koko Kai’s Hawaii roots, appropriately reflect their price point, and stand out against a sea of generic yogurt labels on grocery store shelves.

It was important to the clients to keep the blue circular “wave” flourish of the original logo. I redrew it by hand to get a more organic texture, then simplified the shape to fit better in a standard circular format. This new shape also lent itself well to a husky coconut icon.

After some consideration, I moved away from the coconut icon (as to not be too redundant with the coconut imagery and/or text) but kept the texture, and saved the coconut idea for a sub-mark later on.

I swapped out the old and crowded Koko Kai font for a customized hand-lettered serif font. This gave Koko Kai an organic, yet established aesthetic, and I kept the text on a slight curve to keep it light and fun. To keep everything cohesive, I applied the same hand drawn texture as the new circular flourish.

With a few more adjustments (and several hours of work later) these updates gave the Koko Kai text more breathing room, while letting their name stand out and speak for itself.

In this final version, I nixed the dancing dots above/below the O’s in Koko Kai (which was originally a suggestion of the three pukas found on a coconut) fearing it would create some grammatical confusion.

The official logo lock-ups look great as a solid wordmark, housed inside of the new “wave” flourish, or stand alone. We also saved a coconut illustration for an alternate badge lock-up, with Koko Kai’s clever “Be Cultured. Eat Yogurt” tagline (which worked out perfectly as an alternate label on the jar lids).

*Generally, I advise against stretching and warping elements of your logo to force fit, but it’s important for the brand to have multiple formats of their final logo for various situations. In this instance, Koko Kai’s primary logo lock-up is in a carefully crafted horizontal format, that fits best on their long format labels. The secondary “stacked” lock-up is for times when space is limited, or more vertically/circular formatted. Sometimes you gotta break the rules a little…

The clients also wanted to stick with something close to their original blue, but I warmed it up just a little, and complimented it with a creamy off-white, and a sunshiny yellow.

With a rebranded logo system complete, the only thing left to do was design some new labels that would pop out from the other generally dull and white yogurt containers…

I used a customized version of my “Monstera” leaves illustration as a surface pattern for Koko Kai’s visual identity and label design. Cropped close, it looks a bit abstract, but gives enough organic texture to be cohesive with the logo, and evoke a tropical feeling.

I put the ingredients list on a curve to mimic the waves of the ocean, and sway of palm trees —which worked double duty as a divider to separate elements of the labels for clarity, and flavor distinction.

Currently, Koko Kai offers four original flavors, so we needed four distinct label colors, that would work together as a family, while also leaving room to expand to more flavors in the future.

It’s so exciting to see Koko Kai’s rebranded jars sitting on actual grocery store shelves. I’m grateful to have worked with Chef Aline and Jon to bring their relaunch to a new level. Wishing them continued success with their new look.

If you live here in Hawaii, find them at a farmers market near you, and a growing selection of grocery stores statewide. Or shop online!

(For real though, its delicious…. go find yourself a jar!)