A friend of mine approached me with an outside the box business idea that he needed branding, packaging, and a website for. The more he told me, the more I wanted to be involved. He’s a dad of small children and can’t stand the smell of dirty diapers.
A few years ago he came up with a solution to his problem. A foam clown nose with added fragrance to mask the smell of all those diaper changes. When he mentioned the idea, I smiled. First because I thought it was funny and I was trying to hold back a laugh. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was actually a pretty clever and unique idea.
He and I sat down to some tacos and talked through the idea. He had a niche he wanted to target, and had a pretty solid idea who his market would be.
I tried a few different approaches, each focusing on the nose itself. A sphere, or in two dimensions, a circle. Pretty simple starting point, but making sure that the concept came through was the challenging part.
By the end we had a clear winner. I told him I would have three concepts for him so I showed him all three, but I knew which one he’d pick. A Dadnose, with a mustache underneath. Recognizable, clear, and very “dad.”
For the font, I chose Futura. Timeless, clean, crisp. It matched the minimal vibe of the logo and works great in all caps.
The next step was to design packaging. He wanted the packaging to look sort of like golf ball packaging. Again, he knew his market. Taking cues from the tall thin boxes filled with golf balls, we created something that would stand out on a shelf, and leave room for information on the various scents.
Lastly, the website. He was willing to hear my suggestions on different platforms. We considered WordPress using woocommerce. But Shopify was the best choice for his needs, the seller tools in Shopify are perfect for such a business, and their templates are easy to customize. We built off of an existing template and made some changes to fit the Dadnose brand.
This project was fun and unique, and we’ve continued to work together here and there as new products are released. If you or a dad you know has stinky diapers in their day to day, you might visit dadnose.com and pick up a pack.