Kinship wanted to build a trustworthy brand focused on dachshunds to speak not just to one’s love of dogs, but to the love of that dog. This meant curating a variety of specialty pet care and lifestyle products, sharing dachshund-specific care expertise and fostering a community with a passion for dachshunds. To generate awareness and enthusiasm for a pending launch of a dachshund-focused brand, Kinship needed a lively and compelling brand identity.

We coined the brand name Witzig—German for witty—in a nod to the dachshund’s intelligence and origin. Our unusual typeface reflects the weirdness of the dachshund without sacrificing legibility. We purposefully incorporated the dachshund’s unusual shape in the descender of the ‘g’ in Witzig, and this silhouette can be extracted for use in illustrations, merchandise and social media.

Our vibrant color palette invites unusual but engaging color combinations that, like dachshunds, can’t be ignored. And our custom illustrations reflect not only the dachshund’s eccentricity and playful spirit of Witzig, but also the brand’s knowledge and integrity. Human figures hold their best friends as one is encouraged to hold a dachshund. The dachshunds themselves reflect the variety in the breed’s types of fur and show as much or more personality as their two-legged companions.

To build Witzig's digital presence, we created a dynamic e-commerce and community content website. The site's intuitive navigation and functionality was informed by research into user experience and audits of competitive and comparative sites, and it's categorized to match Witzig's tone of voice and personality. The final product is a site that allows people to connect with those with like interests, find dachshund-specific products and learn about how to best train and care for their favorite breed.

Kinship hosted a few Witzig pre-launch events throughout the US in early 2020 that sold out quickly and were attended by dachshunds and their humans. The attendance of these events afforded Kinship the opportunity to professionally photograph attendees which we used to design a coffee-table book, filled with portraits of dachshunds that reflect their varied personalities.

The brand launched during the COVID-19 pandemic and has been welcomed with open arms and wagging tails. Since the launch, the branding has been featured on Brand New, Creative Review, Little Black Book, Creative Bloq and in GDUSA.