Origin story

Many locals may remember Thunderstruck Books’ location as “The Labyrinth.”

In 2018 the two owners decided to split ways with one owner moving out of the Toronto core with the Labyrinth name, while the other now owning the original location and soloing the store on their own, under a new name — Thunderstruck Books.

Creative storm

With a new name and owner, the revitalization and branding of the book store began. My partner and I conceived and sketched numerous logos and marks; many of those logos were combined into final concepts before resting on a final design.

The finished logo and mark captured the store’s fun and owner; the cloud character primarily influenced by “Kawaii faces” allowed us to play visually and gave the brand more versatility for way-finding and store swag.

Visual design

As the store is very close to the owner’s heart, we explored palettes based on the owner’s favourite colours and played with typography that wasn’t overly comic-booked or kiddish but still captured the fun and excitement of the store. Once the brand was established, we worked on flushing out all the promotional material and collateral such as business cards, stationary and digital signage, storefront designs, and more.