Category Archives: Design & Illustration

AUTHENTIC BRANDING FOR GENTLEMEN’S BEANS BY INJECT DESIGN

9 October 2013

Since it’s MEN’S WEEK here on Stylejuicer I’ve chosen a powerful earthy branding that conjures up 20th Century workmen and their simple pleasure of enjoying a coffee at the end of a hard days work.

Wellington-based Inject Design are the creative heads behind the branding for coffee bar and micro roastery Gentlemen’s Beans and they are in the running for New Zealand’s Best Awards on the 11th of October.
[DESIGNERS & FONT NERDS: Check out Best Awards awesome splash intro for Call For Entries. Hilarious!]

I love the treatment of the wood-cut styled logo and typefaces in combination with a dark earthy colour palette which works perfectly for the coffee bar and has an established and authentic look and feel to it. The brand oozes hard graft 1920th style and appreciation for craftsmanship which is exactly what Gentlemen’s Beans do every day: Roasting their own beans. No shortcut, just pure passion for coffee and not afraid of hard work.

My favourite touch is the tattooed poster boy who I imagine serves as the 21st Century equivalent to the 1920th workman. I’m sure he’s got his iPhone in his back pocket.

Stylejuicer says:

Overall, a welcome change to the middle-of-the-road-lets-appeal-to-everybody branding and mass marketing of global coffee shop chains where I wonder what does a double-tailed mermaid have to do with coffee?

Inject says about Gentlemen’s Beans:

The 1920s social undertone of the ‘working man’ and the consequent appreciation for craftsmanship, the trading of goods as a luxury in the days of long sea journeys and the hard-working innocence of the times, married well with the boutique nature of the business. The story of those hard working souls is what we encapsulated into the brand.

The typefaces used in the logo were re-drawn by hand to reflect a human presence and aged authenticity. The colour palette complements the brick tones of the original structure, as well as encourages desire for the taste of a delicious brew. The wood-cut styled logo mark tells a story about the ‘original gentlemen’ smoking a cigarette after a long, hard days work. The use of the contemporary materials, metallic inks and dimensional lettering, alongside the historical ambience of stamped coffee bags and the brand’s character, creates a harmonious balance of aesthetics from the old to the new, complementing the Architecture of the structure.

Enjoy and I hope you’re inspired!

More information | Inject Design Ltd
Best Awards | Nominations for Graphic, Interactive, Product and Spacial

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‘NEXT LIBERTY’ YOUTH THEATRE MAGAZINE BY MOODLEY

24 September 2013

Graphic designers are technical wizards. They have to be in this day and age. They can re-create pretty much anything on screen but as much as I’ve embraced technology I LOVE crafting things with my own hands and by the looks of it I’m not the only designer who does.

This season’s magazine for youth theatre Next Liberty in Graz, Austria, had some very enthusiastic designers from Moodley Brand Identity working on the project and I can totally understand why. We are all children inside and as a creative person you have to connect with that inner child and paint, cut, paste and stick sometimes.

The most important people for Next Liberty are of course the audience and they are little people with HUGE imagination and enthusiasm. Engaging their audience and living up to their expectation and imagination is the only way to achieve authenticity for their plays. Moodley clearly recognised that and came up with an equally playful and authentic concept for their new season’s magazine where every detail has meaning just like it does on stage.

Thousands of paper clippings were lovingly made into collages and new typography was handcrafted for this project which also incorporates a new look website. As a designer this back-to-basics-handcrafty-cutting-and-pasting makes me smile and I want to see more of it. Trust me, creating collages on the computer just does not have the same effect and the fact that Moodley were not afraid to push this labour intensive method through makes them a worthy feature for Stylejuicer. I’m sure there were a lot of safer routes to go down and I admire the team and client for their confidence and stamina resulting in a magazine that stands out and shines with fairy wings and glitter glue.

Actually it’s the second time I’m featuring Moodley as they are just so utterly brilliant. To see their epic branding for Hotel Daniel click here.

CURIOUS FACT:

Did you know that September 19th is International Talk Like A Pirate Day? Aye Capt’n! And it has become a holiday for members of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Sadly, Stylejuicer missed it this year but watch out 2014!

Enjoy and I hope you’re inspired!

Design & Photography | Moodley Brand Identity
More information | Next Liberty Youth Theatre Graz, Austria

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BEURRE & SEL BRANDING FOR GOURMET COOKIE MONSTERS

2 September 2013

As design briefs go they don’t come any sweeter than designing an identity for a gourmet cookie brand. Designers and close friends Kyle Poff and Casey Martin had the arguably not so tough task to sample the product before starting work on the branding.

Beurre & Sel is a New York based bakery space and store by mother and son Dorie and Josh Greenspan who have been baking cookies together for years using local butter and hand-harvested sea salt which give the brand its name and goodness. Josh says:

Cookies are our family’s way of holding on to memories and they’re our way of creating new memories for you, ones you can treasure and share.

Dorie is an accomplished chef and baker who has been writing and reviewing recipes and food critiques for Bon Appetite magazine for the past 18 years. She is also a cookbook author and four-times James Beard Award-winner. She and her team wanted a fresh, simple brand identity to help launch their online and in-store experience and specified a bold logotype with a distinct ampersand.

The Greenspan’s sound like a lovely client to work with as they totally trusted Casey’s and Kyle’s design eye and let them do exactly what they wanted. Kyle tells me that it was a fast turn-around as they were still coming up with the recipes whilst designing the brand. In the end it all came together for them and the store opened to great acclaim in New York’s Essex Street Market.

This is a great example of a client choosing a design expert and having faith in their expertise which clearly shows in the end result. Kyle and Casey came up with a clean, confident and contemporary brand identity reflected in the minimalist packaging of clear tubes with colourful stickers and a mainly white in-store design where the product is displayed in a wall of holes with just the colourful tops showing. Beurre & Sel’s website was designed by Casey who translated the brand’s personality online and kept the navigation simple and the layout uncluttered. My favourite part is the online gallery which shows some beautiful shots of the cookie kitchen and the team behind Dorie and Josh Greenspan.

Such has been Beurre & Sel’s success that they are opening a new bakery and store front at La Marqueta, in East Harlem at the end of 2013. If you’re in the area make sure to pay them a visit and send me a few cookies to sample – I’m an expert and cookie monster.

Enjoy and I hope you’re inspired!

More information | Beurre & Sel
Design & photography | Kyle Poff & Casey Martin

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CYCLEMON SAYS ‘YOU ARE WHAT YOU RIDE’

20 August 2013

The super cool dudes behind this neat little website will hate me for saying it but ‘Cyclemon – you are what you ride’ really is a CUTE idea. There, I’ve said it and it didn’t hurt, did it!?

Thomas Pomarelle, a fourth-year student at the National School of Decorative Arts of Paris and his creative partner Romain Bourdieux, an interactive designer at OgivlyOne Paris, set up Cyclemon simply to pay tribute to all lovers of two wheels and to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Tour De France. The French pair have known each other since High school and are both incredibly talented designers, illustrators and web developers. They are of course cycling enthusiasts and Thomas tells me:

I’m a warrior in my hometown, because I’m using a VTT*. Romain was a hipster and a runner, now he’s a grandpa. Right now we use our bikes mostly to get around Paris, it’s so much better than the underground.

Cyclemon took off when they were featured on the French inspiration website Fubiz and since then has rocketed to internet and Pinterest fame. To top it all off they’ve received several CSS awards for their website. Much to Thomas’s and Romain’s delight as they didn’t have any particular expectations for their project. It shows that once again the simplest ideas are often the best. The current enthusiasm for cycling combined with their simple illustrative style and use of candy colours has struck a cord with the masses and for all those who can’t get enough Cyclemon is now selling prints of the different cycling types.

Talking about the future Thomas tells me that the pair are currently working on a new project though he won’t reveals more than that it’s nothing to do with Cyclemon, nor it’s graphic style. I have to say that I can’t wait to see what they’ll come up with and have to make sure Stylejuicer beats Fubiz to the post next time.

In the meantime, check out Cyclemon and find out which type are you?

* VTT stands for Velo Tout-Terrain, the French term for mountain biking

Enjoy and I hope you’re inspired!

More information | Cyclemon.com

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CHARLEY HARPER – CHILDREN’S LITERATURE

14 August 2013

I was introduced to American artist and illustrator Charley Harper by a designer friend who gave us his lovely ABC and 123 books as a gift on the arrival of our first son. I was immediately taken by his style and declared that the books were far too advanced for our newborn and I’d keep them safe to give to him later. Well, I have to admit this was over 2 years ago now and he’s still not allowed to play with them. To my defence if the toddler plays with them the baby will want to chew on them and I cannot let that happen to these beautifully illustrated books that I’ve become so attached to.

Charley Harper died only six years ago at the ripe old age of 84 but you wouldn’t know that his illustrations are over 50 (probably 60) years old. To me they are fresh and innovative and reminiscent of Cubist paintings. Like the Minimalism and Cubist movement he distilled and simplified complex organisms and natural subjects and often arranged them in a complex fashion. He called his style ‘minimal realism’ and when asked to describe it, he responded:

When I look at a wildlife or nature subject, I don’t see the feathers in the wings, I just count the wings. I see exciting shapes, color combinations, patterns, textures, fascinating behavior and endless possibilities for making interesting pictures. I regard the picture as an ecosystem in which all the elements are interrelated, interdependent, perfectly balanced, without trimming or unutilized parts; and herein lies the lure of painting; in a world of chaos, the picture is one small rectangle in which the artist can create an ordered universe.

His simplified style combined with bold colour combinations make his illustrations ideal for children’s books and the featured titles are all best sellers. Another artist well ahead of his time who left a legacy that future generations of children will enjoy as much as adults.

Ok, maybe I will let the children play with them after all… only under my strict supervision though!