Design… I’ve missed you.

Here’s a project I’ve worked on recently under the radar. A design project! Oh my… how I’ve missed design. I truly love it… the thought process behind the work, connecting with people through different ideas and materials, etc. I do that with illustration, too, I suppose, but I sometimes miss doing blown out campaigns that really circle around ideas and give them to you in multiple ways. And I love thinking in type and image combined…

So I was happy when my stepmom told me she was planning to open a new thrift store in Camden, South Carolina. (In a cool old cottage building with a too-cute front porch and charm out the wahzoo.) You all know that I lurve thrifting, and I thought: hey! I can do a logo and some fun marketing materials for her to help her out! So I suggested that and she was game.

She said that initially she is just going to try to get on her feet by selling anything and everything… a total junky thrift store (my faves!), but potentially she wanted to sell more high-end type of stuff down the line. So that was a challenge. I kept thinking about how to cater to both audiences and if there was any middle ground. Eventually I came up with the tagline descriptor: Thrift Boutique, which I think fits both well so it can stay the same as the store evolves… (and it sounds fun - fun is important!).

After the logo was established (I went with a simple typeface and smaller tag so it could float between those two worlds seamlessly and timelessly), I thought about how to get the message across of this new store — and in a cheap way … so oversized postcards made sense. She could hand them out, put them in coffee shops, mail them, etc…

For the postcards, I went around and photographed things i’ve purchased in thrift stores (and from my stepmom), putting them in context (and showing how beautiful they are) to hopefully inspire people to think of innovative ways to fit what they love into their spaces. The postcards are meant to show how beautiful simple, and seemingly junky, things can be… an old painted table, a scrap of cloth, a wooden toy, etc.

Here are the postcards:

Closer:

And then she needed business cards. But regular business cards didn’t pull enough weight in my mind (I think people often toss business cards or stash them in their wallets until clean-out-wallet-day). So I thought fridge magnet business cards would do the trick… giving people a convenient and useful way to remember the store. Here’s how those turned out (another photo of a thrift store gem):

And lastly, website. I built her a very simple website that has all the basic info, and some fun stuff besides (my favorite thrifting tips are one of the pages…) check that out here.

Overall, she was happy with everything, and I think it will bring in business (I really hope so!). I loved working on it all… so much fun to brand something like this, to think with design and connecting in mind.

Also, word of mouth never hurt anyone, so if you’re in the Camden area, stop by the Red Door in late August and check it out!

Posted in work-in-progress |