Blood, Sweat + Polony designed these business cards for Tjoobies, a stylish eyewear leash brand that’s handmade from leather/cord and upcycled bicycle tubes.
Tjoobies is a proudly South African product and brainchild of the Stockton Goods brothers.
“Essentially, these fancily handcrafted strings ensure that you don’t lose your glasses (reading, sun, whatever the case may be) – which for most of us are like our figurative’ eyes’,” said Altus and Alwine, the Graphic Designers at Blood, Sweat + Polony.
Brand Name & Design Process
The brand name, Tjoobies (pronounced chew-bees), was inspired by the product itself.
Different from recycling, upcycling doesn’t involve destruction of waste.
On the contrary, it transforms discarded materials into something new, creative or reusable for artistic purpose or environmental preservation.
Due to that, Tjoobies’s idea of upcycling bicycle tubes to be made into rubber connectors on the end of the eyewear leashes is particularly interesting and innovative.
Explaining the design process, Altus and Alwine said, “When creating a new identity, we always start by developing and establishing keywords relevant to our specific client, their brand personality and their product. This helps us to portray 100% fitting branding visually.”
“In the case of Tjoobies, our keywords were: flexible, playful/fun, functional/simplicity, craft/handmade.”
“Essentially, whilst brainstorming, we developed the tagline: Don’t lose your eyes, and this became our concept.”
“The tagline literally explains what the product does, but makes use of a tone that suits the brand personality.”
The Logo Design
According to Altus and Alwine, they generalise and condense sunglasses, reading glasses, far-seeing glasses, snow goggles, bifocals, funglasses etc., into one collective panoptic category: Eyes.
“We don’t know if you’ve noticed, but two rounded ‘o’s are sitting next to each other within the product name.”
“When we saw this, we thought this is a super straightforward, graphic representation of ‘eyes’.”
“So, we took these and added a flexible, fun and straightforward curved line to connect these ‘two eyes’ within the wordmark, which represented the Tjoobie and became an ownable icon for the brand.”.
Typography and Colours
The font used is a further crafted version of Gopher, a typical contrast has thicker vertical strokes and thinner horizontal.
“Still, Gopher provides a unique look by switching that contrast. We love that it has a modern yet traditional feel (which is an excellent ode crafting by hand).”
As for the colour palette, they continued, “The primary off-white and beige represent the natural, authentic and ‘human’ aspect of true craft.”
“The charcoal black is symbolic of the grey/black appearance of bicycle tubes.”
“The secondary colour mix beautifully supports the primaries and serves as a true representation of the brand personality – it’s approachable, contemporary, and stylish. Fun, but not naïve – still sophisticated.”
The Printing of Business Cards
These business cards have not been printed yet.
When asked about the possible printing outcome, “The client wanted to go with a simple first run, but our ideal for these cards would be to go with an environmentally friendly paper with a bit of natural texture as our basis.”
“Then, all the secondary colours should be printed as colour spots to pop on the uncoated paper,” Altus and Alwine suggested.
Feel free to visit our Business Card Categories section to find more business card designs.
Designed by Blood, Sweat + Polony
For Tjoobies
