Llansteffan Castle Honey Branding

Meet The Client

Marian and Rob Evans, owners and custodians of Llansteffan Castle in Carmarthenshire approached Defy as they wanted to develop a brand for their new artisan honey venture.

They had recently starred in Welsh-language channel S4C’s television show Teulu’r Castell  – The Castle family – a six part series following the family’s journey as they care for and develop the commercial opportunities at the Llansteffan Castle estate. During the filming of the series Rob had developed a passion for bee-keeping and was now producing a beautiful cold-filtered honey with the bees making the most of the abundant wild-flowers in the magical location above the Carmarthen Bay estuary.

The Brief

Lovingly producing their high-quality honey from a single apiary they knew they wanted a brand and identity that would convey the quality of their offering whilst also paying homage to the Castle’s history. A brand that would convey at a glance if it was on a shelf of competitors that this product was something special. Alongside this we were asked to develop social media visual content to promote the product launch and sales via the castle website and online shop.

Discovery

During the discover stage we began to craft an idea of how the brand concepts might evolve, developing something that felt like a premium product and yet artisanal with a personal nature. During the conversation with Rob we were fascinated to learn about the incredible effort every single goes to when producing a single jar of honey and we wanted to make this a part of the visual story.

What some people don’t appreciate is that one bee produces only one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in its lifetime! That’s a lot of bees contributing to every pot. About 425 bees to be exact.  So our limited stock of pure honey really is a team effort, lovingly and carefully produced. The flavour and colour a direct result of their intricate process (and love of coastal wildflowers!)

Rob Evans, Head Bee-keeper and Castle Custodian

Concepts & Visuals

Presenting the concepts, we had developed three or four visual styles following the discovery stage, several visuals that were lighter in colour palette along with one prominently featuring black with the golden bee and Celtic inspired golden accents.

With the golden bee, as a subtle nod to Llansteffan Castle and it’s estate we incorporated a silhouette of the castle gate entrance on its back.

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The Result

Thanks ever so much for your work on this. Love the feel of it, you’ve done a great job

Marian Evans

Marian and Rob were delighted with the concepts and chose to develop the black and gold concepts. From this Defy developed the visual identity for the honey brand further, creating a number of different product labels, stickers and tamper-seals for the jars.

For the wrap around labelling we deliberately designed this to retain a gap between the two ends so that you would be able to see the light golden colour of the beautiful honey inside, plus from a practical aspect it allows the customer to see how much is left in the jar without opening it.

With some research we also sourced and a food labelling specialist to produce the associated items that would feature on the jars. Finally, we produced a range of branded social media content as well as creating the associated e-commerce listings on the Llansteffan Castle website (that we also produce content for, manage the SEO and more).

The result – a timeless brand for a timeless, natural product. A product that sold out in just a few weeks!