Mama & Moon

Sydney, Australia

• Farming

• 2 – 10 Employees

• Branding
• Packaging
• Web Design

Walkley Fields are an award-winning alpaca stud farm based near Sydney, Australia. They have developed a six-step scientific breeding process to maximise the probability of strong genes being passed on from each individual animal. These animals are then hired out for siring, sold for profit, or sold to use as pets or even guards for other animals.

Our client explained how they wanted to start marketing a by-product of the alpaca breeding, their beautiful fleece, which is amongst the finest, softest wool around and which at the time they were selling wholesale rather than spinning and refining for sale themselves. The opportunity was there to open up a new market if they could prepare the wool for sale in-house. They had identified the reinvigorated knitting and crocheting community as the perfect market for their product. Now, what they needed from us was a brand to engage that community and a website to sell the wool out from. Over to you Bob.

The new brand is called Mama & Moon. After initial brand discovery sessions with our client, we decided to draw inspiration from the Inca civilisation, who were known to call alpaca wool the ‘fibre of the gods’. The homely new name was developed to appeal to the target market of craft and knitting enthusiasts while giving a nod to Inca history. The name is an amalgam of two Inca gods: Mama Ocllo, who taught young Incas how to weave; and Mother Moon. Together they form an invitingly approachable, informal brand name. The logo device is a reflection of the gods referenced in the brand name, while reinforcing aspects of the product. We created a circular marque which is partially a ball of wool and partly a crescent moon. This is combined with a logotype in a serif font with a slightly quirky style that uses a combination of upper and lower case style characters. This ensures the typography has an overall sense of quality while remaining approachable and distinctive. The cherry on the ball of wool, as it were, is the logo strap line. We developed ‘Heavenly Alpaca Wool’ as a way to evoke the exquisite quality of the product while hinting at the gods alluding to in the name. Once the brand was fully developed, we created stationery, packaging and exhibition materials to enable the brand to sell at shows and online.

After creating a fun new brand, we were asked to work our magic again in coming up with a small e-Commerce site to sell their Hand Classed 100% Australian Alpaca Wool. The amount of people taking up knitting as a new hobby during the Covid lockdown has created a strong market for quality wool products and our bit of design magic (creating a set of illustrations that explained the quality and benefits of the product), coupled with some basic Woocommerce integration and lovely photography has enabled us to quickly launch this website on a shoestring budget and provide a vehicle for online sales to leverage an expanding market.