Trash Icecream

Employer: All Turtles
Role: Sr. Design Director
Year: 2022

The Team

Christina King - Design Lead
Alejandro Rodriguez - Design Lead
William Tamagi - Engineering Lead
Forrest Bryant - Content Lead
Peter Kemme - Motion Design
Carlos Rocafort - Illustration
Gloria Lu - Design Operations
Clio Atencio - Design Director

Services Provided

Brand Strategy
Visual Identity
UX & UI Design
Copywriting
Packaging
Illustration
Motion Design
Advertising
Social Media
Environmental Design

My Role

As Senior Director of Design at All Turtles, I led the creative strategy and design direction for the Trash Ice Cream partnership. I oversaw a multidisciplinary team responsible for rebranding the business—shaping everything from brand strategy and visual identity to environmental design, packaging, and a modular store system—ensuring every touchpoint was aligned, distinctive, and scalable for growth.

Context

Trash Ice Cream started as a grassroots venture with a bold personality. As Senior Director of Design at All Turtles, I led the creative partnership that transformed it into a scalable, brand-driven business. Our team reimagined the brand experience with a vibrant visual identity, design system, modular store format, and marketing assets—from packaging and menus to a new website and custom swag. The result is a playful, expressive brand that celebrates creativity, indulgence, and nostalgic joy.

The Challenge

With a short-term goal of opening a new location and a longer-term vision of becoming a franchise, Trash Ice Cream needed a bold, cohesive brand that could scale. They partnered with All Turtles to develop a full 360° brand experience—one that would differentiate them in a crowded market, highlight their unique personality and positioning, and deeply resonate with their audience. The challenge was to transform a beloved local concept into a brand platform built for growth.

The Process

Discovery & Strategic Foundation

We kicked off the project with immersive conversations and collaborative workshops to uncover Trash Ice Cream’s ambitions, values, and audience. Through research and insight-driven exploration, we defined a strategic foundation to guide every creative and business decision.

Mission

Our mission at Trash is to highlight the fun and whimsy of everyday life and encourage full indulgence in its pleasures.

Trash ice cream is a celebration of life. With the finest quality ice cream and bold and exciting toppings, we aim to create a decadent experience that is a party for the mouth and a joy for the soul.

Brand Values

Bold
Edgy
Playful

Trash Ice Cream is a bold, indulgent brand that disrupts the ice cream market with high-quality, unconventional flavors and toppings. Its brand design—featuring striking typography, a vibrant color palette, and an expressive ice cream mark—captures the playful, over-the-top experience and adventurous spirit of enjoying Trash.

Brand Identity & Narrative Development

Original Logo:

As a new startup, Trash initially worked with an online service to develop its first identity. While the concept—an inverted "A" resembling an ice cream cone—had potential, everyone agreed that it needed execution improvement to grant scalability and extensibility.

New Logo & Visual System:

We embarked on an extensive creative process, exploring dozens of logo directions across three rounds, while increasing the fidelity of the proposals. The final mark struck the perfect balance of playfulness and precision, and instantly clicked with the team.

Alongside the logo, we built a comprehensive visual system, including:

A dynamic and expressive typography system
A vibrant color palette and bold layout principles
A flexible brand narrative and tone of voice for copywriting
Custom illustrations and motion elements to bring the brand to life
The identity was designed not just to stand out—but to stick in your memory, like your favorite flavor on a hot day.

Below are some sample images from the extensive foundational branding work we did:

Brand Guidelines

Ilustrations

Digital Presence

To bring the brand to life online, we designed a digital experience that mirrors the craft and creativity of the product itself—unexpected, expressive, and full of attitude. From UX to content to motion, everything was built to provoke, delight, and stay coherent across platforms

Design System Lite

Marketing Website

Social Media Presence

Packaging & Marketing

We designed packaging and marketing elements that amplified the brand’s bold personality and unapologetic tone. From stickers inspired by parental advisory labels to merch that made a statement, every detail reinforced the joyful indulgence of “getting trashed.”

Cones and Cups

Gift Cards

Product Imagery

Environmental Design

To support Trash’s goal of franchising, we partnered with their interior designer to ensure the brand was visually impactful, operationally efficient, and ready to scale. By rethinking the customer journey and layout, we reduced wait times and boosted throughput, resulting in a smoother, more profitable experience.

Exterior & interior branding

The Outcome

The rebrand of Trash Ice Cream transformed a scrappy local favorite into a scalable, culturally resonant brand. Our work led to a dramatic increase in customer engagement—growing their social media audience and interactions by 9x—and helped streamline the in-store experience, reducing wait times, accelerating orders, and driving higher sales. With two new locations launched and more on the horizon, the brand is now well-positioned for continued growth and franchising.