The Refinery developed brand experience and marketing design concepts for SusieCakes, helping elevate the bakery’s in-store environment, digital presence, outdoor marketing, social content, and customer-facing materials while preserving the warmth that made the brand beloved.
The challenge
SusieCakes needed a brand refresh that could make the bakery feel more cohesive, elevated, and modern without losing the warmth people already loved.
The brand had a strong emotional foundation: celebration, nostalgia, generosity, and the very specific joy of walking into a bakery and immediately deciding you deserve something frosted. The challenge was translating that feeling across the full customer experience, from the storefront and display cases to outdoor marketing, social content, website concepts, and in-store materials.
The work needed to improve visual sophistication and consistency while still feeling friendly, approachable, and unmistakably SusieCakes.
Polished, but not precious. Sweet, but not saccharine.
The idea
The Refinery approached the SusieCakes refresh as a full brand experience system.
The goal was not to make the bakery feel like a different brand. It was to make the existing brand feel more intentional everywhere customers encountered it. That meant building a visual language that could support product appeal, store flow, brand storytelling, digital engagement, and local marketing while keeping the warmth and personality intact.
The design direction leaned into a cleaner, more cohesive expression of the brand: inviting store environments, charming outdoor placements, useful digital concepts, flexible social templates, and marketing materials that felt joyful without becoming cluttered.
The idea was simple: make every touchpoint feel like it belonged to the same bakery.
A bakery with good lighting, better hierarchy, and very persuasive cake.
What The Refinery made
Brand experience design
The Refinery developed brand experience concepts for SusieCakes, helping create a more cohesive visual system across physical, digital, outdoor, and social touchpoints.
Store concept design
The work included premium store concept design focused on making the bakery feel warmer, more modern, and more visually connected to the quality of the products.
Store remodel creative
The Refinery supported store remodel concepts that improved flow, product visibility, and the overall customer journey while preserving the brand’s friendly personality.
Before-and-after store transformation
The remodel concepts helped move the store experience from dated and less cohesive to more inviting, polished, and product-forward.
Website concept
The Refinery explored a website concept that extended the refreshed visual system into SusieCakes’ digital presence, supporting a more consistent brand experience online.
Outdoor marketing and billboards
The Refinery developed outdoor marketing concepts, including billboard designs and wider campaign views, to bring the SusieCakes brand into public-facing media.
Curb appeal and exterior signage
The refresh included curb appeal and exterior signage concepts designed to make the storefront more recognizable, inviting, and aligned with the broader brand system.
Social media concepts
The Refinery created social media and digital marketing concepts that translated the brand into more cohesive, shareable content across platforms.
Brand grid and storytelling
The work included a complete brand system overview, brand personality concepts, and storytelling moments designed to capture the warmth, joy, and everyday celebration of the SusieCakes experience.
Why it worked
The SusieCakes refresh worked because it treated the brand as an experience, not just a logo or a set of marketing materials.
For a bakery, the physical space matters. The storefront, signage, product displays, customer flow, and in-store atmosphere all shape how people feel about the product before they ever take a bite. The Refinery’s concepts helped make that experience feel more cohesive and intentional while keeping the brand’s welcoming personality intact.
The outdoor and curb appeal work extended that feeling beyond the store walls, giving SusieCakes a stronger public-facing presence. The social and digital concepts helped the brand show up consistently online, where food brands need to feel both polished and instantly craveable.
The result was a broader brand system that could support stores, campaigns, digital content, and marketing materials without losing the emotional center of the brand.
Warm. Clear. Cohesive. And dangerously good at making cake feel like a plan.
Project details
Client: SusieCakes
Campaign / Brand line: Layer on the Love
Assignment: Refresh and extend the SusieCakes brand experience across store, digital, outdoor, and marketing touchpoints
Project scope: Brand experience design, store concept design, store remodel creative, website concept, outdoor marketing, billboard design, curb appeal, exterior signage, social media concepts, brand grid, brand storytelling, promotional materials, and visual system development
Market: Bakery / food and beverage / consumer brand
Primary capability: Brand experience and campaign design