The Corn Bros. needed everything from the ground up. I partnered with them to invent the brand name and develop their brand DNA. They also have an ongoing need for specific logos for each unique model.

All in all, a fun project for me as they love a retro surf vibe. And I'll drop in on that every chance I get.

Gotta have more Corn Bros?

facebook.com/CornBros

Mondo Baldo sells apparel for a niche my client calls "The Bald and Proud."

The proprietor is a guy named Andy who also goes by Baldylocks.

He started Mondo Baldo because he wanted to create the first brand dedicated to a "Bald World". This Mondo Baldo includes men choosing a clean head-shave and refined lifestyle, as well as "Hairless Heroes" with Cancer and Alopecia. Mondo Baldo's brand mission is to unify bald people regardless of their choice or condition and wear his bold, witty and empowering statements such as "Sorry to hear about your bad hair day." Mondo Baldo also gives a portion of it's profits to children's Cancer and Alopecia research. When he gave me the 411 on his company while discussing the rebranding project, I thought, "Hmm.. this sure is different." Sign me up!

What my Client says
We went through a heavy duty, exhausting, grinding and collaborative (he welcomed my input) exercise to reach our final goal, a unique logo as unique as my brand and niche. Also, one that would not include the obvious bald head, but also be fun, funky, quirky, and create intrigue. "Mondo Baldo" is like any other contrived word (Google, Lollapalooza, etc.). I didn't want something fashionable, a trendy logo look or similar to anything I've personally seen. And I wanted it to 'dance' to the rhythm of 'Mondo Baldo', because it's fun to say! Dwight and I wrestled for months to get to it. Alas, his organic, 'perfectly imperfect', hand-drawn circle containing all of the elements I wanted came to life. He was so patient, but he understood my desire to really get it right. I think he nailed it.

Brad Cousar has spent years flying around the world as a military and commercial airline pilot. He has served multiple tours in Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, and other locations; he has flown ultra-long-haul routes to some of the world’s farthest destinations.

Still, he wanted even more excitement… and the concept for Fly by South™ was born.

The Assignment
Brad needed a website with e-commerce capabilities that was easy for him to edit. It had to be able to handle different types of customers from retail to wholesale.

Also in the works are shelf-talkers, hang tags and a full on product display, which is shown here in progress.

Residew is a band of brothers from other mothers and possibly a chick or two all of whom attended Davidson College in the 90's.

The original band, Mountain Dew went through some Fleetwood Macish turmoil in the early 90's and changed their name simply to Dew. Later on a few more members were lost to graduation and other circumstances and they reformed as the now current, Residew.

They only play class reunions and only play at one venue. Davidson College.

Every gig they play is The Reunion Tour.

The Process
The original direction from the client was to do a spin-off of Mountain Dew.

Once viewing the initial concepts they decided they'd provided significant misdirection and were unhappy with the result. To avoid wasting more time on a futile path, I put together a survey for them to fill out to really nail down what they were after, as the budget was getting eaten up rapidly and, "I'll know it when I see it." would no longer cut the mustard in this situation.

After a tad more scope creep occurred, the new direction was to somehow make it feel more like the Allman Brothers whom they had a tendency to cover in their live performances.

A second round was presented which you can see in sketch form.

After some internal bickering the band mutually arrived at a final logo. And by mutual, I mean one heavy handed member forced his opinion on the others.

I can get away with saying all this because they're friends of mine and they know I love 'em.

The Encore
Let’s make T-shirts!

A few years ago, The Home Depot was using the theme "It's Time" throughout all of their marketing materials. I like to think outside the box, in this case a massive orange box. While developing the seasonal look for Spring 2008, I attempted to tweak the theme to "It's Spring Time" visually representing it as The Home Depot logo (and on certain instances even replacing the logo with the theme mark).

Obviously, I failed.

The housing market was in the tank during this period and the powers that be, working with The Richards Group, set out to revamp the companies marketing strategy. Helvetica replaced Futura. Seasonal marketing was for the most part eliminated. Butterflies were never to be seen again. And the "You can do it. We can help" tagline was changed to "More Saving. More Doing."

Unfortunately this work found itself on the cutting room floor.

A new take on work-life balance 

A while back when things were going good, The Home Depot had a number of different retail operations, Home Depot EXPO, The Home Depot Garden Center,  and Yardbirds to name a few. They also were opening some new stores that were targeted at a higher end market while at the same time not alienating their core customer. 

On your left are some cover concepts for The Home Depot Design Center.

Maybe you can tell, I don’t mind (d)white space

SPARK Partners is a new program created to develop a stronger partnership between Springdale Park Elementary (Spark) and businesses dedicated to the neighborhoods they serve.

2013-14 is the inaugural year to make this program successful for on-going funding of key school initiatives. Businesses are critical partners and help form a community of stakeholders with parents, teachers and other community leaders to fund the education of the next generation. 

This is some of the good shit that doesn't fit in a neat little container. Pre-digital, BSJ, and in some cases even before 1984, although I think most of this is closer to the turn of the century. Y2K came and went without incident, but I still can't toss out these energy bars.

An Old Skool Process 
We'd put together these complicated overlays with the main art pasted on a board with rubber cement and some stripper in a dark room (no, not the kind at the Pink Pony) would have to take our mechanicals and create the film.

They hated me.

But some good stuff resulted from all the effort. It's all part of the Dwight Smith experience.