Hot Bread Kitchen Gets Some Hot New Packaging
When we first started working with Hot Bread Kitchen a few years ago, the social purpose bakery was a big idea with a little bread stand at a greenmarket in Harlem. Since then they have grown into a social enterprise that employs immigrant women to bake delicious breads while learning valuable skills for careers in the food industry. They now have more than 20 retailers carrying their products, including Dean & Deluca and the Brooklyn Larder, and participate in 4 greenmarkets per week, including Union Square. Over the past year Bad Feather has worked together with Hot Bread Kitchen to develop packaging that’s as tasty as the the breads they bake.
Lavash crackers (organic, crispy crackers topped with a variety of seeds and spices – you want these) are one of their biggest sellers. The challenge was to design packaging that retained the DIY, homegrown aesthetic that has influenced the Hot Bread Kitchen brand from the beginning. In the early days Jessamyn would hand-stamp kraft paper business cards with the Hot Bread Kitchen logo, and that was a foundation for design elements used in all of the marketing materials we’ve since created for them. When we set to transitioning from their handmade packaging (stamped re-closable paper bags) to a printed design, it was important that we retained the stamped logo which results in a charming irregularity when the bags are lined up on a shelf.
We finally got our hands on a few bags of newly-packaged lavash and must say, they’re as tasty as ever and we could not be more pleased with the result of the finished product.
Email Marketing Party Magic
We had you at magic, right? Bad Feather recently had great success using an email marketing campaign to promote this year’s Sonic Union party. Maybe you’ve seen the self-mailing poster invite we created last year? We got loads of positive feedback on the design and we’re told the party was one for the record books. When we sat down to brainstorm ideas for this year’s party, the folks at Sonic Union were interested in promoting the event digitally. It is 2010 after all, and in addition to being a greener and more interactive approach, we saved some serious cash by eliminating printing and postage.
Aside from rethinking the distribution of the invitation, we wanted to design an invite to reflect Sonic Union’s industry reputation of being darn good party people. On our end the ideas started flowing with the mention of the Zoltar machine that would be one of several party attractions. We created this digital poster design that we felt appropriately conveyed 100% FUN.
The poster design was embedded in an HTML email campaign sent to an initial list of invitees. We sent this through a 3rd party service, utilizing their list management capabilities to wrangle the guest list Read the rest of this entry »
Shop Bag Online
We recently launched shopbagonline.com, a custom-themed Big Cartel store for Bag, a Nolita shop that sells gorgeous genuine leather handbags. In addition to carrying such New York brands as Tano, Sabina and Pietro Alessandro, Bag owner Sheryl Lee, recently launched her own house brand of elegant and utilitarian handbags and wallets, simply named Bag.
You can purchase the Bag house brand collection online, and view many more styles from other brands available at the store on Mulberry street.
Collaborating on JoanWatts.com
We recently developed a new artist portfolio site in collaboration with award-winning book designers, Skolkin + Chickey. We first learned about Joan Watts when our friends at Radius Books published a gorgeous monograph of her paintings. We were pleased to have the opportunity to create this minimal site design to showcase her beautiful work.
Check out JoanWatts.com.
Did Someone Say “Zoltar”?
It’s funny sometimes what sparks ideas, in this case a word.
We’ve been doing quite a bit of image referencing for a project in the works here at Bad Feather. After a good old google image search, our next favorite resource is the New York Public Library’s digital gallery. Take a look at some of the treasures we’ve dug up from the visual depths of the interweb:
(click the thumbnails to view full-size images)
Get Your iPads Ready for Popular Science+
Today PopSci and Bonnier announced Popular Science+, the new digital version of Popular Science magazine available on the iPad. This is the first magazine app to be developed on Bonnier’s Mag+ platform.
Bad Feather designed and built PopularSciencePlus.com to promote the launch of Popular Science+. Read about the app features and watch the concept videos from BERG to learn about their collaboration with with Popular Science to re-imagine the form of magazines.
And of course, if you have an iPad you should download the April issue from in the iTunes store now! Follow @PopSciPlus on Twitter and tell them what you think of their rad new app.
Perhaps Nicknames are in Order
Pictured above, clockwise from top left: Heather Marold Thomason, Kristen Carlisle, Lan Lam, Brad Thomason
Now, back to work.
A new dress for Scuola Italiana
We’ve just completed a redesign of ScuolaItaliana.org, a brochure website for Scuola Italiana del Greenwich Village. The site offers schedules and registration forms, detailed information about the school’s methodology, events and additional resources for potential and returning students. Our goal in the redesign was to refresh the school identity and to improve the overall site navigation and content organization.
Scuola Italiana was founded in 1987 and over the past 23 years thousands of students have learned Italy’s language and a deeper understanding of its remarkable culture. We wanted to create a logotype that would not only reference Italian design (yes, we used Bodoni) but that would also reflect the establishment of the scuola.
We re-purposed the majority of the content including a wonderful library of images the scuola has collected for event announcements over the years. We also based the color palette on the original website so the overall site design would be familiar to returning students. We’re quite proud of the outcome, a minimal html design that shows how pretty code can be.
Heather is a student at the scuola and Bad Feather loves Italia! We thoroughly enjoyed our research for this project. Here is a great article we stumbled across on Italian type design including a story about Massimo Vignelli smuggling Helvetica.
Young Visionaries
Do you know someone with an idea for a project that works toward a vision of change? The International Women’s Health Coalition recently launched their 2010 Young Visionaries Campaign:
At the International Women’s Health Coalition, we are inspired by the activism of young people and their visions for the future of sexual rights and reproductive health.Through our Young Visionaries contest, we aim to celebrate, acknowledge, and support the exceptional and ongoing work of young people.
Our Young Visionaries contest encourages youth to share their visions for young people and the future. Until March 25, 2010 youth between the ages of 18 and 30 can share their visions for a just and healthy life, and get a chance to win a $1000 grant from the International Women’s Health Coalition to fund a project that works toward this vision.
We recently completed a project, in collaboration with Dtek, to design a microsite for the Young Visionaries contest. Built on top of the WordPress platform already being utilized for IWHC’s Akimbo blog, the site allows users to register, nominate a contestant and vote to support their favorite nominees. You can read a more detailed write-up of the site development and WordPress plugins we utilized, courtesy of Andy, over on the Dtek blog.
Check it out and show your support for the visionaries from around the world.
Fancy Things
Fancy things are happening within the walls of operation Bad Feather.
Here’s a taste. A type exploration by Lan Lam:
Frontside or Back Bowls
Wow, this blog has gotten a bit dusty! While it’s snowing outside here in Brooklyn, we thought we’d take a moment to tell you about another little project we worked on with SKI Magazine earlier this winter…
The folks at SKI were looking to create an interactive map of Crested Butte that allows readers to follow 2 different skiers on a typical day at the resort. Bad Feather established the art direction for the project and SKI Magazine developed the project in-house. Choose an itinerary and see for yourself what the mountain and town (monster breakfast burrito?) have to offer.
The Bad Feather WordPress Maintenance Spiel
Sweet. You have an awesome, powerful WordPress site that allows you to add and edit content like a crazy web superhero. But as Spidey’s story reminds us, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
WordPress is a complicated machine – a database that organizes, archives and serves up everything you throw at it. Like any other machine, it requires regular attention to make sure it continues to function properly. To continue with the superhero motif, the web has many a super-villain that one must be diligent to thwart; hackers, worms and server crashes, oh my.
In the event of a catastrophe, is your site safe and prepared? Is your data regularly backed up, are your versions up to date and is everything running smoothly? If your site crashed, are you sitting pretty with the knowledge that you can restore the entire site in a few clicks? If so, carry on, soldier. If not, keep reading… Read the rest of this entry »
Twentieth-Century Pattern Design
Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students
Data Flow: Visualising Information in Graphic Design
Genius Moves: 100 Icons of Graphic Design
How to Think Like a Great Graphic Designer
Paul Rand: Conversations with Students
Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry
SAGMEISTER : Made You Look