Overview
Captain Louie’s moves seafood through New York City from a Brooklyn operation, feeding restaurants, markets, and distributors across five boroughs. Their catalog runs sixteen species deep, and most of them never show up on a Manhattan menu by name. Keo fish. Riverbarb. Four finger threadfin. Conger eel.
They came to us with a product list and no system holding it together.
We built a crest: a script wordmark with a fish tail flourish, set in a shield that points down like the tip of a fillet knife. Each species takes the shape in its own color. Cooked shrimp runs crimson. Snail meat goes purple. Anchovy gets the palest blue in the case.
Project Goals
- Turn sixteen one-off labels into one system a warehouse crew can read at a glance
- Make freezer-case identification a color decision instead of a reading decision
- Carry the identity across retail pouch, master case, and 30-pound bulk carton without redrawing it three times
- Survive frost, condensation, and a hand truck
- Look right in a Sunset Park cold room and on a specialty grocer shelf
- Let Captain Louie’s add species seventeen next quarter without calling a designer
Results
Sixteen crests, one shape, one voice. The color coding does the work the species names cannot, and a picker on the floor grabs the right case from across the room.
The system scales down to a 12 oz pouch and up to a 30 lb corrugated carton of featherback fish paste with the pattern, panel, and shield all intact.
Captain Louie’s now walks into a buyer meeting with a brand instead of a spec sheet.
