Nelson’s Ice Cream
Branding
Packaging design
Environmental Design
2025
Nelson’s Ice Cream is a hypothetical rebrand for a Portland-based ice cream food truck, Hurry Back Ice Cream. This project explores how a brand system can help a small business grow into a brick-and-mortar location and sell products in retail stores.
Additional project details and brand guidelines are available upon request.
Brand History & Opportunity
Originally operating as Hurry Back Ice Cream, the brand had a loyal local presence but lacked a cohesive identity system and the flexibility needed to scale beyond a food truck. The goal was to create a more consistent identity while maintaining the approachable feel that made the brand successful.
Strategy
The rebrand introduces Nelson’s Ice Cream, a more personal and timeless identity built for growth. The visual direction balances modern clarity with subtle retro influence, drawing from mid-century aesthetics, creating a brand that feels familiar, refined, and scalable.
Before I started designing, I did quite a bit of research. I looked at the existing brand, competitors, their audience, and the visual landscape of both local ice cream shops and larger retail ice cream brands. I also interviewed another small business that had gone through a similar expansion. That helped me identify what needed to stay authentic to the original business and where there were opportunities to build a stronger system.
Brand Renaming
One of the biggest decisions was actually renaming the brand. I changed Hurry Back to Nelson’s, which is the owner's last name. I wanted something that could feel established and timeless enough to grow with the business, while still feeling personal and connected to the original owner.
Visual identity
I developed the identity around this balance of nostalgia and playfulness. I wanted it to feel like a neighborhood ice cream shop that could have existed for years, without making it feel overly vintage or dated.
The wordmark is intentionally pretty simple, and then there are smaller playful moments like the cherry apostrophe. I also developed a fairly broad color palette because I knew the identity needed enough flexibility to work across a lot of different applications. The pattern varies in colors depending on the flavor of the ice cream, which can be seen on the rims of pint packaging.
Packaging
Brand in use
I established consistent rules around typography, color, imagery, and graphic elements, but I didn't want every application to look exactly the same. The system needed enough flexibility that something like a menu could prioritize information and readability, while packaging could be much more expressive, and they would still immediately feel like the same brand.
Graphic Elevations
Once I established the identity, a big part of the project became figuring out how it could scale. Because my concept involved taking this small food truck into a physical location and eventually retail, I needed the identity to work across very different environments.
Retail Products
The retail products were especially important because it was the point where the brand had to work outside of the ice cream shop. I had to think about what someone would see first, how the product varieties could be differentiated, and how to maintain enough consistency that multiple flavors and product sizes would still feel as part of the same family.
Digital Presence
