Somewhere down in the beaches of Los Angeles lives a surfing, film-editing woodworker who travels the world gathering pieces of wood and designing and crafting custom high-end furniture. His artistic pieces breathe with life and personality.
And we had the privilege of creating a logo and identity for him that would serve as a fresh face for his work as well as a functional brand for his pieces.
We continue to work with the good folks at Artist Home on their successful TIMBER! Outdoor Music Festival as it puts on its coziest winter coat and becomes TIMBRRR! Winter Music Festival (see what they did there?)
The poster we designed above takes its cues from the summer festival’s poster we designed, but with a much more chill effect (we hope!) and all still centered on a modified version of the TIMBER! logo we designed. (more…)
This is the poster we designed for the 2013 iteration of the annual Squeak ‘n’ Squawk music festival in Tacoma, Wash. If there was a squeaking and squawking animal that was the festival’s mascot, this would be one of its feathers.
Summer is here, and we admit we fell under the spell of June sunsets and footloose color palettes as we created our poster design for a show being put on by Team Up for Nonprofits. With the riveting headliner Sera Cahoone, the solid lineup of female Northwest artists and the very worthy cause, it was a magical project we couldn’t pass up.
The good people at Gundlach Bundschu Winery tapped us to design a small printed piece introducing their premium Heritage Wines to their most exclusive customers.
The Art Dept. has gone global.
The Spain-based translation firm Interllingua was embarking upon a brand re-boot and asked us to help them through the process.
With the creation of their logo, we immediately found ourselves playing with concepts of translation. Real language translation moves beyond just interpreting words—it truly interprets meaning.
To this end, we designed a logo that incorporated graphic elements with a double meaning—quotation marks altered to resemble speech bubbles:
We placed the open quotes below the name and the closed quotes above so that the “speech” almost seems to travel through Interllingua and come back out again—the same, but transformed. This speech bubble motif was additionally carried out in their letterhead and business card:
We also worked with them to distill their promotional goals into a clearly-written, engaging, visually interesting brochure and Web site.
The site was duplicated and translated into the five other languages. Interllingua will be able to continually update and evolve the content on their site through their interactive blog and social networking features.
We’re excited to see where their new identity and marketing tools take them!
We at The Art Dept. love food. Even more so now that one of us is pregnant. And we’re really digging this food truck and street food revolution happening up and down the West Coast. Truly amazing chefs are putting their hearts and souls into these accessible mobile marvels for the masses.
So, when our friend Jace—the musician behind one of our favorite NW bands Fort Union—approached us to create a logo for his brand new Portland food truck, he had us at “fried.” Our creative juices began eagerly flowing (along with a fair amount of saliva.)
Why tour when you can DETOUR?
Gundlach Bundschu vineyard excursions get you off the beaten wine path to taste wines where they are grown. And we were excited to join them on the tour with our cameras in hand to capture the experience—car bingo, hawaiian bobbleheads, African watusis, wine and all.
Enjoy the video above (produced by Sarah + Peter) and be sure to take the tour next time you have the chance—see the flyer below (designed by Mary)!
We recently had the distinct pleasure to work with the gals at Wine Country Chocolates to help them create a new logo that better expressed their unique, gourmet, hand-made chocolates.
You can see the tasty new logo above on their brand new sign outside their Jack London Village location in Glen Ellen, CA. We look forward to seeing the logo take over their boxes, packaging and other materials.
Our design director Mary found a way to carry over their yellow and black checker pattern used in their previous logo (see the image below:)
However, she freed the checks from their formalized placement by giving them an imperfectly-edged, handmade look just the way their one-of-a-kind chocolate truffles appear. She also made “Chocolate” the focus of the logo while (with the help of Ms. Esme Johnson’s handwriting) giving it an almost drizzled look—almost as if it were written in chocolate sauce. Don’t you just want to take a bite out of it?
If you haven’t tried their truffles before, be sure to stop into one of their locations for a mind-blowing treat. We highly recommend “The Elvis” in all its peanut-buttery and banana-y goodness.
And if you have tried their truffles before, don’t you think it’s time for a second helping? Or a third? Or a fourth . . . ?
