A red Cake Social matchbox with gold script lettering, resting open on an ornate silver tray

Cake
Social

Concept identity for a custom cake studio

A cake shop for every occasion, not just the big ones. The identity had to feel like an heirloom and read like a party invitation at the same time.

Type

Concept, design brief

Service

Brand identity, print and packaging

Year

2026

Designer

Katrina Dodds

Process

Piped, not
typeset.

Custom cake studios mostly brand themselves one of two ways: airy pastel minimalism, or a script so delicate it disappears at small sizes. Cake Social goes the other direction and commits to a single deep red. The wordmark is custom script lettering with the swell and drag of a piping bag rather than a pen, which means it can be piped onto an actual cake in buttercream and still be the logo. That is the test the mark had to pass, and it is why nothing about it is typeset.

Around it, American Typewriter does all the practical work. A slab serif is an odd partner for something this ornate, and that is the point: it keeps the brand from tipping into wedding stationery. The voice does the rest. Every piece talks like a person who is slightly too excited about cake, which is what stops the deep red and the silver trays from reading as formal.

Logo & mark

A wordmark you
can pipe.

Custom script lettering with the weight distribution of buttercream rather than ink. It reduces to a CS monogram for anything too small to carry the full name.

The Cake Social wordmark, custom red script lettering stacked over two lines

Primary lockup

The two words stack rather than sit on one line, so the descender of Cake and the ascender of Social interlock. That vertical lockup is what lets the mark drop onto a square: a matchbox, a napkin, the top of a cake.

American Typewriter specimen in Regular, Semibold and Bold

Typography

American
Typewriter

Three weights, and nothing else. The slab serifs and rounded terminals keep the supporting type warm enough to sit under the script without feeling like a different brand.

It is a deliberately unglamorous choice next to the lettering. That contrast is what stops the whole thing reading as wedding stationery.

Color palette

One red,
two softeners.

The red does everything load-bearing. Light pink and beige exist to give it somewhere to sit, so the brand can go rich on a matchbox and quiet on a napkin without changing its mind.

01

Red

HEX
#911A1D
RGB
145, 26, 29
CMYK
0, 82, 80, 43
02

Light Pink

HEX
#F4C2DA
RGB
244, 194, 218
CMYK
0, 20, 11, 4
03

Beige

HEX
#F2EADE
RGB
242, 234, 222
CMYK
0, 3, 8, 5

Invitation

This is not a drill,
there is cake involved.

The envelope carries the whole voice before anything is opened. Lipstick prints and postal marks sit in the pink as a tint, so the red is only ever spent on words.

A pink Cake Social envelope reading You're Invited... For Cake!, with lipstick prints and postmarks tinted into the paper

Copy

Every corner is doing a job. This invitation is doing a lot of heavy lifting, just come. See you there, or we'll eat your slice. Yes, like cake, cake. The jokes are the reason the piece works: without them it is just a pink envelope.

In the pile

Recognisable
face down.

Stacked, the envelopes still identify themselves. The lip print bleeds off the corner and the wordmark sits bottom right, so the brand survives being half covered by the next one in the pile.

That is the realistic condition for a mailed piece, and it is worth designing for rather than only checking the flat artwork.

Several Cake Social envelopes fanned in a stack, each showing the lip print and wordmark

Collateral

Front says who.
Back says why.

The face of the card is the wordmark on red over a tone-on-tone flourish pattern, with no contact details at all. Everything practical happens on the reverse.

Cake Social business card front and back: the script wordmark on red, and a loyalty card with eight cake stands
The Cake Social loyalty card propped against a white buttercream cake, three of its eight stands stamped

Loyalty

Because cakes are for
every occasion.

Eight line-drawn cake stands, stamped with a pink CS as they are earned. Buy eight, the ninth is on us.

The line the card closes on is the actual strategy: it argues that a cake does not need a wedding to justify itself, which is the whole reason a studio like this can exist.

Napkins

Life's too short
for boring cake.

The monogram sits alone in the centre, with the voice running along two opposite edges so it reads whichever way the napkin is picked up.

Here's to messy bites, sticky fingers, and licking the frosting off your thumb when no one's looking. It is the only piece in the set that admits cake is eaten rather than photographed.

A stack of cream Cake Social napkins with a red CS monogram at centre and copy along the edges

The product

The logo,
in buttercream.

The test the wordmark was drawn to pass. Piped onto a heart cake in white icing at cake scale, the lettering keeps its weight distribution and stays legible with a slice already gone.

A deep red heart-shaped cake with Cake Social piped across it in white buttercream, pearls around the shell border and one slice cut away

Photography direction

Flash on,
manners off.

Direct flash, close crops, and cake being eaten rather than displayed. The styling stays vintage, all pearls and bows and shell borders, but the behaviour in frame never is. That gap is where the brand's humour actually lives.

Direct-flash close crop of a woman biting straight into the side of a pale pink tiered cake
A woman in red lace resting her chin on her hands behind a red velvet cake with a single lit candle and a piped 21
Overhead crop of cupcakes in red, pink and cream pinned into a woman's updo like hair rollers

Direction

Three rules for anyone shooting this brand. Get close enough that the frosting texture reads. Let the cake be damaged. Keep the palette in shot without staging it, so the red and the pink arrive through what people are wearing and eating rather than through a backdrop.

← All work