May design showcase: tasty creations

In this month’s showcase, we’re highlighting stationery designs that are especially, shall we say, appetizing. Flavorful? OK, we’ll just say it: These designs are downright delicious. They’re also extremely flexible. (Didn’t see that one coming, now did you?) Our restaurant, catering and food retail clients often need to send out last-minute campaigns for spur-of-the-moment promotions, so their stationery designs must be usable for nearly any kind of campaign. Fortunately, our designers are experts at uniting existing brand standards with the unique attributes of email design. And they also really, really like food. At their desks. Preferably sent via (ahem) priority overnight service. You know, to prevent staleness. Just sayin’.

Client: Deluxe Foods
Emma designer: Leigh Bernstein
Design level: Concierge Design

This specialty food retail shop from Seattle, Washington, needed a stationery design informed by its current website branding, which balances the refined look of 19th-century English fine china with a thoroughly non-snobby attitude.

Leigh took the header directly from the website in order to replicate the look exactly, since the fonts used for the logo and navigation bar are not standard, web-safe fonts. For the footer, however, she created a beautiful Nouveau design that is consistent with Deluxe’s existing aesthetic: organic but not overtly floral, dainty but not froufrou. And because image-based borders cannot stretch to accommodate longer campaigns, Leigh designed the footer to just barely creep up the sides of the frame. That way, the swooping lines serve to draw the eye back up to the content without sacrificing the stationery’s flexibility.

Client: Cactus Restaurants
Emma designer: Elizabeth Williams
Design level: Concierge Design

Before we began designing, Marc at Cactus Restaurants sent multiple logos and several other files for Elizabeth’s reference, including photographs and Lotería cards. And although most of those images did not end up in the stationery itself, they were still important to the initial design process because they helped her understand the design aesthetic at Cactus – whether that be the design of the menus, the website or even the décor on the walls.

The end result highlights their most-used design elements (logo, font-specific slogan and the lithograph-style image of four men) while incorporating new design ideas that take advantage of email’s particular capabilities. Elizabeth completely customized the standard “send to a friend” link in the top right corner, and she built a permanent sidebar with an editable text box, which will collapse and disappear if Marc chooses not to input text.

Client: Jailhouse Brewing
Emma designer: Jimmy Thorn
Design level: Concierge Design

The folks at Jailhouse Brewing wanted an edgy design incorporating multiple elements in a rowdy, unstructured way. “I don’t want it to be too clean,” read the design request … and right away, we knew this would be fun. Oh, and did we mention it was for beer?

Jimmy started with the logo, which fortunately was available as an EPS file, meaning that the image quality was perfect and the background was transparent. Jailhouse provided the scratchy gray background texture, so Jimmy digitally “tore” the edges and added just a bit of a drop shadow to the header. From there, he found a few key images to add to the design, including a photograph of the brewery from Jailhouse’s Facebook page that he antiqued and framed with an old-fashioned border. The slogan (and its distinct typeface) are also integral to the identity of the Jailhouse brand, so Jimmy made sure to highlight it in the footer and support it visually with the ball and chain.

Client: The Sweets Truck
Emma designer: Leigh Bernstein
Design level: Concierge Design

Anyone who speaks with Molly at the Sweets Truck – be it Sam in sales or Kelley in design – can’t help but note how sweet she is! It’s fitting then, that she runs a mobile bakeshop with to-die-for cupcakes. And even fittinger that her custom stationery express that same charm and friendliness.

And since Molly already had established brand standards for font styles and color, Leigh was able to draw directly from provided elements to begin the basic design. The circular icons are images that Molly uses consistently on the web and on the truck itself, so Leigh knew to spotlight those without putting them in the background of the content area, which would have caused rendering problems in certain email programs. She also used the approved Sweets Truck font for all image-based text in the sidebar, while sticking with a web-safe font for the live type at the bottom. With those little tricks of the trade, Leigh was able to protect and promote Molly’s brand identity and still ensure that all readers will see the *exact* design that she does on her own machine.

Until next time … hugs, brand extension and stomach growls from your entire Emma design team!