From logo to factory floor — a brand identity and industrial design project
Summary
A wide-ranging freelance contract for Alfa Vital, a premium lucerne producer based in Biloela, Queensland. The project covered everything from brand identity and product packaging through to the hands-on design and physical construction of a full agricultural processing installation, three custom conveyor belts, a hydraulic press system, a full-scale dryer, and a converted bulk bin truck.
Role
Role
Brand Identity Design, Product Packaging, Industrial Design & Fabrication (Freelance)
Client
Alfa Vital · Brand Identity, Product Design & Industrial Installation
Platform
Physical/industrial (conveyor systems, hydraulic press, dryer) plus print & social (packaging, Facebook assets), no website component
Scope
Full brand identity and logo system, 15kg product label design, Facebook launch assets, design and hands-on construction of three conveyor belts, a hydraulic press, a full-scale dryer, and a converted bulk-bin truck
Project Detail
This was not a typical design brief. Alfa Vital needed to launch a new premium lucerne product from the ground up, which meant building the brand and building the machinery at the same time.
The Alfa Vital identity needed to communicate quality, agriculture, and premium product positioning without feeling generic. The AV monogram with leaf detail was developed across multiple variations to give the client flexibility across different applications. The product label for the 15kg Premium Lucerne Chaff bag was designed to carry the nutritional analysis clearly, communicate key selling points, and still feel like a brand worth trusting. Facebook assets were created to support the launch, including a profile picture, page header, and promotional posts.
The physical side of the project required designing and building three custom conveyor belts, a hydraulic press system, and a full-scale dryer housed in a shipping container. An old horse truck was converted into a high-capacity bulk bin complete with a walking floor and self-levelling system. Every component was designed from concept and built hands-on, including fabrication and welding on site in Biloela.
Process
Overview
Alfa Vital came to me with an ambitious goal and a tight timeline. They were launching a premium lucerne product into a competitive agricultural market and needed everything built at once, the brand, the packaging, the social presence, and the physical machinery to actually produce the product. It was one of the more unusual briefs I have taken on, and one of the most rewarding.
The Brand
The starting point was the logo. Alfa Vital needed an identity that felt premium and agricultural without defaulting to the clichés of the category. The AV monogram became the foundation, with a leaf detail growing from the letterforms to connect the mark directly to the product. Multiple variations were developed to give the client genuine flexibility: a circular badge version for the product label, a standalone wordmark for signage, and a simplified mark for social media profile use. The green palette was rooted in the product rather than picked from a generic agricultural colour library.
Getting the variations right early meant every subsequent application had a solid foundation to work from. There was no retrofitting the logo to fit the label or the Facebook header, it was built to flex from the start.
Product Label
The 15kg Premium Lucerne Chaff label needed to do a lot of work in a small space. Feed store customers make quick decisions, so the label had to communicate the product's key advantages fast, dust reduced, higher in protein, consistent quality, while also carrying the full nutritional analysis required for a product of this type.
The landscape photography of the Queensland irrigation fields running across the label grounds the product in where it comes from. Combined with the Alfa Vital brand mark and the Queensland Product badge, the label communicates provenance and quality at a glance. The layout was designed to be readable quickly in a busy retail or agricultural environment, not just attractive on a screen.
Facebook Launch Assets
To build awareness ahead of the product hitting shelves, a set of Facebook assets was created to establish the brand's presence online. This included a profile picture using the standalone AV mark, a page header carrying the full brand, and a coming soon promotional post to generate early interest. The assets were designed to be consistent with the product label, so anyone who encountered the brand online before seeing it in store would immediately recognise it.
The Installation
The design work ran in parallel with something considerably more hands-on. Alfa Vital needed a full lucerne processing line built from scratch on their property in Biloela, and that meant designing and physically constructing every component of it.
Three custom conveyor belts were designed and built to move product through the processing stages. The sizing, drive systems, and chain configurations were all worked out from scratch based on the production requirements. Getting the throughput right meant understanding the whole process flow, not just the individual components.
A hydraulic press system was designed and built to compress the lucerne into the final product form. Alongside that, a full-scale dryer was built inside a shipping container, converting the container into a functional processing unit within the installation.
The most involved single conversion was the horse truck. An old truck was stripped back and rebuilt as a high-capacity bulk bin, fitted with a walking floor system to move product toward the outlet and a self-levelling mechanism to ensure consistent flow during processing. Getting the walking floor geometry right required working through the problem on site, adapting the design as the build progressed.
Every component was fabricated and welded on site. The problems that came up were practical and often unique, and each one required finding a solution with what was available rather than waiting for ideal conditions.
Outcome
The installation went into production and the brand launched alongside it. Seeing the machinery running, the product coming off the line, and the Alfa Vital label on a finished bag of chaff at the end of it was a genuinely satisfying result. This project sits outside the usual boundaries of design work, but the thinking behind it, understanding the problem, designing a solution, and making it work in the real world, is the same process regardless of whether the output is a logo or a conveyor belt.
