The Tape Pig

Sometimes brand extensions for our clients turn into fun, quick little projects. Catch Friends of Dean Martinez, Brothers and Sisters, Aug. 8th @ Lamberts.






Design and illustration by Jett Butler. Tape cassette heads from Neubawelt.

Prehistory

Our neighbors 1080 (formerly Matchframe) in Austin have just completed their script to screen series “Jurassic Fight Club” for History™, and we got a crack at the print ad for 1080.

We offered the tagline revision ”We Make Prehistory”. We dissected a handful of toy dinosaurs. It seemed the only choice.

Project Team: Creative Director, Jett Butler. DinoPhotography Sarah Emmons and Jett Butler. 
Dissection, arrangement and procurement, Sarah Emmons and Melissa Martin. Image editing and layout, Jett Butler.
Copy: 1080.
The show, “Jurassic Fight Club” logo and History™ logo are © 1996-2007, A&E Television Networks. All rights reserved.

Summer Color

The last, soft, colorful piece of Devin Garza‘s packaging and promotion—for his new album ‘Every Reason’—is in; a shirt by FÖDA Studio. Put it on. You have every reason to where this shirt.

Printed on American Apparel t-shirts. Available at shows or directly from Devin himself.


Client: Foreverything Records and Devin Garza
Design team: Melissa Martin and Sean Lopano
Project Creative Direction: Jett Butler

Doon

We’ve never met Edgar Papazian.

But, let us tell you about him.

He was born in St. Ettiene, France, but he’s a U.S. Citizen. He’s half Armenian; in his case, this means his cultural roots—and the depth of history channeled through Mt. Arrarat—define aspects of his work, his belief in the importance of Architecture, and his understanding of Yergatakir.

He is kind.

He was educated at Yale and Columbia, thus the efficacy of his work lies in well informed and rigorous philosophy. His architecture is at once ancient and contemporary, precisely misaligned in certain cases. His work is tactile, poetic, subtle, and at once flagrant. He sometimes creates systems so that he may break them, as in his Armenian Holocaust Museum.

His firm is called Doon Architecture, and they have a new brand and identity by FÖDA Studio.

He lives in Portland.
Cheers from Austin.

Armenian Holocaust Museum, courtesy of Edgar Papazian, RA.

Yergatakir writing sample.

Textile woven pattern studies by FÖDA.







Logo and customized typeface, joined, shown above.
Screenshots from the website (which features separate atom and RSS feeds for both the client’s writings as well as his portfolio, a fully operable backside content management system, and elastic window size) follow:





The design team for this project was led by creative director Jett Butler in the spring of 2008. The logo was designed by Jett Butler with additional development by designer Melissa Martin, and production assistance from Sarah Emmons. The identity systems were designed by Melissa Martin and Jett Butler. The textile pattern was developed by Sarah Emmons and deconstructed by Jett Butler. Additional logo concepts were developed by designer Caspar Lam. Project research team included Caspar Lam, Sarah Emmons, Melissa Martin, Sean Lopano and Jett Butler. The website was developed by Caspar Lam at FÖDA Studio and John Hoysa for unsustainableDesign.

MAKE Media; MAKE Good.

Matt Wallis’ and Todd Green’s MAKE Media / MAKE Productions arrives in Austin. A direct, utilitarian brand by FÖDA Studio reflects both the company promise as well as their service. MAKE Media, MAKE Productions, MAKE Good. Their promissory:

MAKE.
We leave drama to actors and the myth that process is unique to our competitors. We are not compelled to force a form onto our clients work. We get the job done. We do it well. We assemble. We produce. We edit. We make. That is who we are, and it is enough.

This brand dispels the typical frivolity and self-aggrandizing language often used in the industry. It desires only to get the job done well and correctly. The suggestions of assembly—both optical and literal—informed the identity system, appropriate for a film production company. Exploration of the myth of the “persistence of vision” led us into the logo permutations that spread across their identity system.









Splash page with PDF profile on their site, makemakemake.com

The design team for this project was led by creative director Jett Butler, spring 2008. Brand and Promissory developed by FÖDA Studio and MAKE. The logo was designed by Jett Butler with development by designer Melissa Martin. The identity systems were designed by Melissa Martin and Jett Butler. Logo concepts were developed by designers Caspar Lam and Jett Butler. Project research team included Caspar Lam, Sarah Emmons, Melissa Martin and Jett Butler. Paper by French™, recycled. Sourced by the kind Jessica Phillips at Clampitt.

Livestrong places Language Room in new spot, brand by föda

Typography For A Language Room

Indulgent use of three dimensional typography for return client Language Room, green FSC certified stock from Neenah, black Letter Press by Austin’s own Bradley Whitford. Hand assembled with glue sticks by the band. Each member (Language Room is no longer just Todd Sapio, but includes brothers Matt & Scott Graham, and drummer Caleb Kelly now) with his own “assembled by” stamp made here in Austin as well. Design for DIY. Stickers, T’s, and a spot for the band with Livestrong forthcoming.
Language Room loves you.

red arc one

Over beers—and after dinner—in 2003, we produced the “brand” for red arc one. It was reckless, it was literal. It was based on nothing more than a knee jerk reaction to the name, the idea that Helvetica was ubiqutous and modern. It was a cheap and fast exercise that two good friends could easily knock out over the weekend. And it stuck...until now. This is the new red arc one.

To be honest, that’s how lots of logos are created—most probably—but not how brands are created. It is certainly not the process we would use or recommend now. We got lucky.

This year, we were granted the rare privilege of stepping back into one of our first projects with the sum of our experience since then in place. We began in December photographing and documenting Rick Price’s work as red arc one. He’s built a practice for himself over the last 5 years through his perseverance and talent, and it is hard to tell whether it is in spite of —or because of—the identity we concocted for him.

We’re loathe to ever recommend to clients with existing brands to pitch the baby out with the bathwater: brand recognition is brand recognition, even if you don’t like the art. With red arc one we’ve kept the substance of the original logo, rejected the parts where it failed, and built a new package around his brand.

That’s the difference now. We know a brand is not a logo.

What you can count on from red arc one is contemporary architecture with modernist cues or underpinnings, yet comfort always dominates. What Rick does best is blend what he likes as an architect with what his clients want. The red arc one style is comfort. He takes architecture seriously. He takes his clients seriously. He just doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he’d never put style and statement before comfort and function. That’s his brand.

He’s warm, gregarious, outgoing, sometimes boisterous, and his work reflects this as well. This too is his brand. That makes him unique in the marketplace: a well educated and well traveled designer who is humble and willing (and able) to do a high end residence or drink the Corona’s necessary to make a bottle chandelier.

Thus: gone are the heavy handed reds, poor use of negative space, and Helvetica Thin (appropriate only for hair salons in 1986 or the Mac Book Air). In their place: Identity development that speaks to who the client is, what they promise, and how that’s different than others in the marketplace. His marketing package is heavily gridded modernism handled in playful and loose ways. A warm, masculine pewter/bronze on cream stationery. Bolder, plush, lower case Helvetica. A thickened and reduced mark, locked in now to the typography through careful application of proportioning system. One should be able to transpose the adjectives that describe our work for Rick Price with those that describe Rick’s work for his clients.

Cheers to red arc one; 5 years in the making.






Design Team Credits: Creative Direction by Jett Butler. Designers Melissa Martin, Caspar Lam and Jett Butler. Architectural Photographer, Jett Butler. 

Bronze

Norwalk Lofts

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925–2008

Casa Tarjeta

Small projects can be as viable as large ones, especially when designers are experimental and develop new methodologies. As with everything, research—and the winding path it sometimes takes us on—is key. We discover inspiration via research. As the context of a project unfolds, precedent, implications and insinuations are revealed. So too the elegance of correlations that keep designs hyper-specific (or even idiosyncratic) to each client.

A friend in San Antonio requested a very small project: a single business card that used playing cards as an inspirational foundation. We discussed the potential for the misreading and an emergence of a gambling with your business motif, but all parties agreed this was probably a non-issue. Stripping the essence of a ‘playing card’ to its bare minimum—and doing a little research into precedent—allows the concept to be subtle and it’s relationship to the holder to emerge. It also has the added advantage of not forcing inappropriate components (like an actual jack with a sword, or a spade for an “A") into the design.

First, the history of playing card patterns is merely one of solving a technical problem: to curb cheating by creating a back to a card that is not easily marked. Second, the mirror text image: designed so that players don’t have to rotate cards, potentially giving away their hand.

We took the second motif at face value, but dug into the first. Pattern study in Mexican architecture led us to Spanish architecture which led us to the Alhambra and a recurring interest in the mathematical sequences inherent in the Moorish carving and pattern tradition found there. The non-recurring (or asymmetrical) patterns found in this type of work are also part of the Islamic tradition in general, using only words or patterns, but no narrative forms, to depict God or the Prophet. These motif’s influenced the Spanish artisans that followed the Moorish reign, and so by extension Mexican motifs (though subtle, to be sure). Note: research the history of acequias in San Antonio, and their technological root with the Moors.

We developed our own modern variation on this pattern and letter pressed it into soft cotton stock, inking the mirrored text on the back. The end result is delightful.

Creative Director: Jett Butler.
Design team: Jett Butler, Sarah Emmons, and Melissa Martin.
Letterpress by the master, Bradley Hutchinson.

High Design from Mexico

The book Tercera Muestra Internacional de Interiorismo Contemporaneo–Bienal Mexico from Plazola Editores features two projects from one of our most published and award winning clients, MJ Neal, AIA. We can promise—with accuracy and sincerity—that we are not a satellite office of said architect, merely that his award winning work gets published often. Thus, our brand development, illustrations, and photography often go along for the ride. He might tell you that they pave the way, but we defer such praise. The book includes images and illustrations from Anthony Nak and Ramp House, both of which we’ve posted before. However, illustrations for RAMP are new to see in a book, and we include a portion of those illustrations here (originally drawn in 2004, published 2008).

{Designed as a diptych, two panels in european A2 format, 420mm x 594mm.}


{Details from the boards}

Repost: "Best Of..."

Though the small print on business cards is often taxing to read, there is a high return in having a memorable one. Often, this may be the only leave behind someone gets, the only device that might inspire a call or drive them to your website, besides your charming personality of course. Thus, these little packages stimulate more than the economy.
The following are four designs that made it to the book from Rockport. These projects aren’t exactly fresh now, as the book was curated in early 2007 our submittals are from 2006. That said, most are aging well enough.

You can purchase Best of Business Card Design, 8 here, here, and here.
The book was curated by none other than Austin’s very own Sibley/Peteet.

From the BWM Group Identity Package, Landscape Architecture and Planning, Round Rock, TX (Creative Director: Jett Butler, designers: Jett Butler, Trina Bentley and Nikki Lo Bue)

David Hobizal, Motion Editor, Austin Texas, Identity Package (Creative Director: Jett Butler, designers: Jett Butler and JR Crosby)

Maiko Sushi, Austin. Identity Package (Creative Director: Jett Butler, designers: Jett Butler and Nikki Lo Bue)

The Park, Nashville Recording Studio (designer: Jett Butler)

Winners/Losers

MJ Neal, AIA, took 3 illustrations from FÖDA Studio into the Austin AIA Built Awards competition this year and received the prestigious Honor Award for Pilates Studio. (He claimed this same award in 2007 for the Farley Studio, also accompanied by 3 of our illustrations.)



Estonia
We collaborated on concept followed by presentation for his design of the EKA School of Art Competition in Estonia. Though certainly a worthy competitor, the project did not emerge a victor. International design juries for open architectural competitions are notoriously difficult to read, and as is often the case, impossible to assume what they are looking for. Such is the risk of competition. You can see the winning entries here, and our boards of course are below.








MJ Neal, Architects has been a client of FÖDA Studio since 2004. We developed his corporate brand, website, various marketing materials, and continue to both photograph and illustrate his award winning work.