Northcoast Zeitgeist

New work: Pat Lang for Congress.

 

I've noted before how much I love the opportunity to combine my passions for design and progressive politics. So it was a real pleasure to work with my friend Pat Lang - who is running for U.S. Congress to fight for Ohio's middle class families in the 15th District - on his campaign identity. Lang is a son of Appalachia who, like me, attended Ohio University. He was elected to Athens City Council as an undergraduate. After graduating law school, Lang served as an assistant county prosecutor before beating a 30-year incumbent to become Athens' Law Director. His opponent, should he get past the march Democratic primary, will be Rep. Steve Stivers, a career banking lobbyist. The contrast couldn't be more obvious.

"I’m running for congress because I grew up in a small Appalachian town - as a child, my parents could sometimes afford to heat just one room of the house in winter time," Lang says. "When the coal mines closed and neighbors got laid off, I saw things go from tough to tougher. That’s why it is so frustrating to watch Congress and see a whole lot of nothing. We can do better. We can start by ensuring a strong middle class, protecting Medicare for seniors and creating jobs. That’s why I’m running for Congress." And that's why I am so eager to work with Pat.

As I set out on the design, I knew I wanted a bold, optimistic look for Lang's name that matched his Midwestern populism and work ethic. Inspired by typefaces like the sturdy Borgstrand Pro, I created a thick, geometric face for his name, which from a design perspective is a good one because it's so short. My next move was taking the counter of the "A" in his name and turning it into a simplified outline of the state Lang hopes to represent.

When I shifted to the descriptor, I wanted the kind of contrast a serif typeface could provide. I didn't want anything too weak and, armed with the desire for something with a more contemporary flair, I chose the sturdy and attractive Archer. From there, it quickly became time to settle on a color scheme. Blue and red, of course, is nothing new in political design - or as shorthand for left and right. I did consider green, which I feel is synonymous in political design not with the Green Party but with one of my all-time heros, the late Sen. Paul Wellstone, who once said:

"The future will not belong to those who sit on the sidelines. The future will not belong to the cynics. The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams."

I decided to leave green with Sen. Wellstone, so in working within the traditional color scheme I settled upon a bold blue, a strong red, and, for accent, a lighter blue to complement both when used. To me, the blue of Lang's name speaks to his Democratic politics, while the red of the descriptor represents how his middle class advocacy speaks to both sides of the aisle. The end result is what you see above. There will be more to share as Lang's campaign rolls on (yard signs, bumper stickers, etc.), but I wanted to show you our first steps. In the meantime, go, Pat, go!

Three Johns enter. One John leaves.

I've been asked to participate in an upcoming issue of Ferocious Quarterly, something I'm beyond excited about. What you see above is part of the final product, something I've been busily working on over the holidays. For other sneak peeks, head on over to my Dribbble page.

Taken out of context.

I love working on logos. Each project presents another opportunity to distill a concept to its most essential core. But what happens when you take key parts of logos out of their context and, therefore, their intended meaning? I thought I'd give it a try. Below, abstracted from some recent work, is the result:

 

End-of-year pet update.

Here's Quigley, looking relaxed in his new bed.

And here's Bea Arthur, hanging out in her favorite spot near the register (new bed not pictured).

Oh come on!

My niece, looking as adorable as ever in a candid from Casey's recent holiday shoot:

The Inspector Stamp, new from Cranky Pressman.

We're in love with our new Inspector Stamp, the latest product offering from the official letterpress printer of Northcoast Zeitgeist, Cranky Pressman. The stamps are small (the live area is a little less than .75"), portable, self-inking, and are available in three colors. And they're now for sale - for the nice price of $23. We've already been putting our stamp to good use. They're perfect for the return address area of an envelope, as seen above. They're also going to be helpful in editioning limited runs of artwork - much nicer than my terrible handwriting.

Keith and Jamie at Cranky Pressman were kind enough to let us get our hands on an Inspector Stamp a little early, and I already can't wait to order another for Casey, who's got a home library's worth of academic books to claim as her own. So run, don't walk, to Cranky Pressman and order your own Inspector Stamp. And remember, the medium itself poses a unique set of challenges, so be sure to read Cranky's handy fine print before you get started. Thanks again, Keith and Jamie, we love seeing our design come to life.

Irons in the fire.

So much going on, hence the radio silence over the last little bit. Icons, logos, big projects, little projects. Big doings at the day job. Big doings after-hours. Plenty behind, plenty ahead, plenty to share soon! I promise.

Happy Spirit Day!

Cleveland Food Trucks: Make this blog happen.

 

Despite what often seems like insurmountable circumstances - led chiefly by short-sightedness and red tape - Cleveland's food truck scene keeps growing. Area trucks have been featured on national programming. Events like Walnut Wednesdays have popped up. All the while, more and more trucks are joining the scene. It was with that momentum that the team behind Food Carts Portland and NOLA Food Trucks contacted me earlier this year to design the logo for a Cleveland-themed food truck blog. The process to develop an identity for Cleveland Food Trucks was very enjoyable, and resulted in the logo you see above.

I wanted a look that fit the city's personality and featured strong colors and the appearance of a strong work ethic. I also wanted to impart a sense of flexibility/modularity and, of course, dining. Think: Street scene without being too hipster-ish or cutesy. Think also: Street food but not terribly unhealthy fast food. As you'll see when I discuss early versions below, the final product was the outcome of bringing a few strong pieces together, and I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Part of the modularity I touched upon, meanwhile, comes with the ability to split the logo into several parts, including two icons. First, the food truck itself:

 

 

I love how this little piece turned out. If you're wondering, the "CLE" on the side is set in Mark Simonson's Refrigerator Deluxe Heavy, one of my very favorite typefaces. Food trucks tend to be very memorable in their shape, so it was vital that I got it right (and instantly recognizable). A second icon is the fork-and-spoon skull-and-crossbones:

 

 

Simple, yet evocative if used by itself as a complement to the full logo. These three pieces comprise the full Cleveland Food Trucks identity, but, while we're here, let's look at the designs that either ended up on the cutting room floor or helped contribute to the final product. Here we go:

 

 

I got the ball rolling with a simple marquee shape set in a desaturated color scheme. While the overall look didn't quite do it for me, I did like the balance of the strong typeface used for "Cleveland" and the script face used for "Food Trucks." I also liked the fork-and-spoon combo.

 

 

I took the type embedded in the marquee - as well as that combo - and gave it a bit more energy (and a new color scheme). Interesting, but again, not quite there. So to cleanse my palate, I decided to play with some new typefaces.

 

 

 

I like both faces used here, so I held onto them while I played with other imagery. From there, I came up with the truck that eventually made it into the final look. I also wanted to put a food-related spin on a Cleveland icon, the Free Stamp in Willard Park.

 

 

Getting back to type, I played with direction and a new typeface, Hoefler & Frere-Jones's Cyclone.

 

 

When I stepped back and looked at this lockup, I finally felt like I was getting somewhere. It was at that point I thought to add some iconography to the lockup, at first with the use of the food truck as well as the state's outline with a star over Cleveland.

 

 

This lockup felt very close, but the state wasn't working quite right. So, in its place, I put the fork-and-spoon.

 

 

And there we are. Well, almost there. Everyone involved preferred the color scheme from the previous version, so we moved back to that for the final lockup. All in all, a very fun project with a good outcome. Now, when I say "make this blog happen," I mean exactly that. Due to circumstances out of her control, one-half of the team behind the other food truck blogs left Cleveland (the other half lives on the west coast). Meaning, the idea is still there and now has its logo, but lacks the local muscle to help pull it off. Is this where you come in? If it is, and this is something that interests you, let me know and I can put everyone in touch!

Ohio love, just in time for the holidays!

After the initial wave of having NCZ items in stores around the area, I've long wanted to get some new products out there. It took a little while, but my ducks are finally in a row and I'm beyond happy to introduce four new items! So, meet these 4" x 6" mini-prints, which I'm calling "Sunny Ohio," "Leafy Ohio," "Rainbow Ohio," and "Stately Ohio." Each a tribute to the state we call home, each now available at Native (with more location announcements coming), and each designed with versatility in mind!

By saying they're versatile, I mean they're truly ready for anything. They're conveniently sized, so they'll fit perfectly in a standard frame. Or, if you like, you can use them as a notecard (the back is blank) and send them in a standard greeting card envelope. Or, if you're looking for yet another use, just affix a stamp to the back and you've got a postcard! Versatile. 

Best yet, you'll be able to buy them in two ways at Native - individually or as a complete set of four. They were printed offset on a nice, thick stock. If you're curious, the typeface used on each is Luke Lisi's handsome and versatile Homestead, a product of the Lost Type Co-op. And they're priced to move, so get moving Ohioans and Ohio fans! The holidays are right around the corner. But, there is one more thing ...

Well, two more things. Joining the prints at Native are two new 1.5" square buttons - "Sunny Ohio" and "Stately Ohio" - both printed at the official button vendor of NCZ, the Busy Beaver Button Co. We love the work Busy Beaver does - and has done for us before. They're both on sale for a low, low price and are available at Native - just like the prints - right now.

LOVE OHIO, BUT DON'T LIVE HERE (OR IN NORTHEAST OHIO) ANYMORE? You're in luck! The NCZ Store is open and stocked with a limited quantity of the print sets. Operators are standing by!

Get 'em while they're hot!

We saw a few folks walking around wearing these babies at the market this weekend. Get yours for a mere $15 and shop at the area's best farmers' market in one fell swoop!

Homesteaders.

I've written before about my admiration for the Lost Type Co-op and the its impressive roster of typefaces. Well, one look at Luke Lisi's Homestead and I made my first jump into ownership of a Lost Type specimen. Homestead, dubbed "an evocative yet forward thinking slab," is exactly that. It's forward thinking comes, in no small part, in its versatility. See, when you buy (yes, buy, don't skimp out on hard-working typographers busting it for you) Homestead, you get a total of six layerable typefaces. Check it out:

When you take the varying pieces and play with color and layering, it can produce really stunning results, as this sample from the Homestead page demonstrates:

I've already started to put Homestead to good use. What you see below is one of four such parts of a new series of mini-prints I'm producing to sell, something I'm very excited about.

Another facet of the typeface I find really impressive is that the layering and piecing-together works very well when you keep everything in the same color and simply play with transparency, as I did above and below. Simple, sure, but with so much character. So go buy Homestead and start playing in Illustrator and really have some fun with it. I sure am.

Read banned books.

This week is Banned Books Week, and I wanted to mark the occasion by re-posting the five posters I created last year to commemorate the event. As I said last year:

Books get challenged for no other reason than some hacked-off twits with too much time on their hands think it their duty to rob you of your right to think for yourself. Or, heaven forbid, that you'll be confronted with concepts they might not be comfortable with. Needless to say, banning books is about as un-American as it gets. This country was built on freedom. Not fear. The sooner we remember that, the sooner we'll progress as a society.

So without any further ado, here they are:

Just a song before I go.

I had a wonderful time in Minneapolis working with some very talented people. Until we meet again, Twin Cities. From the Grain Belt back to the Rust Belt!

Designing the new look for the Haymaker Farmers' Market.

 

It's hard to put into words how much a part of the fabric of our town the Haymaker Farmers' Market is - though we've tried. Casey, in a post about our weekly visits to the market, called it "The ritual that nourishes us." In referring to the market as the "soul of a city," I noted that the market represents what's truly best about people and Kent itself. Further, I've been fortunate enough to design the day-of-market signage for a former vendor and, in a fit of late-night energy, even tried my hand at a quick redesign of the market's identity.

All of this is just a longer way of saying how much we love the market - and how much it means to us. Imagine our excitement, then, when new market manager Kelly Ferry approached us earlier this summer with the proposition of completing a proper redesign of the Haymaker identity! What you see above is the result of that process, but before I go into more detail about the identity we're so proud of, let's look at what it replaced and Ferry's goals for the redesign. The old logo:

 

 

Initially, when Kelly approached us, she was interested in strengthening the previous logo and turning it into a true branding element she could use on things like the web, t-shirts, re-usable bags, signage, collateral and, potentially, permanent pole banners near the market's location. The old logo was hard to incorporate into new pieces, so she was also interested in adding some sort of frame to the identity to bring everything together.

We, meanwhile, were interested in cleaning up several things we noticed about the logo, including the mixed case of the title, the thin white outlines around the crops and the notion that you didn't get a sense of heritage from it. The market is one of the oldest in the state - next year will be its 20th anniversary - and we felt it merited a refreshing that spoke to the twin senses of tradition and optimism surrounding both the market and the city it calls home. It was also imperative to me to deliver a final product that could look good in multiple colorways and when reproduced at any size, large or small. In the end, we arrived at six logos total, representing three distinct descriptors and two unique colorways. The first pair:

 

 

Almost immediately, we knew we wanted to go in a completely new direction with regard to the agricultural product depicted. Both the beans and tomato were appropriate, but to us the apple - green in one colorway and red in the other - spoke to the kind of American optimism we wanted the new logo to express. When approaching us, Ferry expressed interest in having an enclosure around the final product as well as incorporating the depiction of a field within. The twist, from our end, came in deciding to make the apple the focal point (like the sun in the Great Seal of the State of Ohio) with the "field" emanating from the apple like the rays of the sun. The second pair:

 

 

Once we knew we wanted the apple/field and sun/rays to be the focal point within the enclosure, the decision of how to treat the market name itself came easy. We placed it within a below-center banner that appears to wrap around the enclosure, coming from behind on the left and disappearing again on the right. The darker color of the banner in both colorways places emphasis on the name but never takes away from the importance of the apple. In the above options - interchangeable with the first pair - we replaced the "Kent, Ohio" with "Since 1992." The descriptors ended up fitting just right within the space created by removing some of the rays and that is bounded by both the enclosure and banner. The third and final pair:

 

 

The above options, of course, promise to be a focal point of next year's market collateral. Twenty years is an impressive milestone for a market that is only gaining steam, so it's something to be quite proud of. It should be noted that we also thought it very important to not have too much descriptive detail within a relative confined space. This is why there are three distinct options as opposed to trying to jam the city, founding date and anniversary into one mark.

A logo can't be all things to all people, or else you risk losing the simplicity that makes the best marks so memorable. What's more, most people won't spend nearly as long looking at the logo as the designer or client, so you have to be sure to avoid bombarding the viewer with too much information. And finally, what if the logo ends up on a poster with a bunch of others and therefore gets reproduced at a very small size? The more descriptors, the harder that miniature logo will be to read.

As for the chosen typeface for the final product, we used House Industries' Neutraface, which I've been in love with since its release. Neutraface perfectly encapsulates the tradition, optimism and progressivism we hoped to express in the logo. And since there are so many varieties of apples - just as there are so many wonderful offerings at the market - we presented each logo option in two separate colorways. Why don't we refer to them as the Granny Smith or Braeburn options?

When I've discussed logo projects in the past on this site, I've been careful to include options that either didn't make the final cut or were stops along the way. I'd like to do so again here. The first logo you see below is, again, the one I designed as a late-night what-if. It offers both a green color scheme and sense of mid-20th Century optimism that, in some ways, made it through to the final product. Below that are two looks at a logo that fully emphasizes the field over any crop at all - and creates an "H" icon out of individual plots in an overhead patchwork of fields. A decent logo, but lacking the energy of the eventual winner.

 

 

We couldn't be happier with these new logos - or how well the design process went in working with Kelly. She's just the leader the market needs as it transitions into its next phase and we hope that its new look helps keep the positive momentum going. The Haymaker Farmers' Market is so important to not only Casey and I, but also to the city we love. To be able to have a hand in branding such a prominent fixture in your community is a tremendous opportunity, and one that we approached with gusto. I hope you enjoy the result as much as we do.