Tag food
Operation Gastronomia: We’re Hungry
Here at Bad Feather we finally took pause from our regular workload, much of which involves designing and building other peoples’ websites (resisting urge to make O.P.P. joke… we recently tallied 30! custom WordPress sites) to create one of our own: A long discussed, but never prioritized project – Heather’s food blog.
This week we proudly launched OperationGastronomia.com. Let’s call this a beta version, as there are of course many plans for added plugins and design embellishments, but Heather is cooking up a storm as usual and it was time to put her content out into the world.
So now you know what we’re eating. Check it out, and follow Heather’s twitter stream @opgastronomia for more tasty bits. And most important of all, buon appetito!
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.
A Case of Holiday Madness
The activity level at Bad Feather HQ during the month of December can best be described as elfin. Handmade activity was at an all-time high, as we all abandoned our computers and dedicated all resources to making, baking and packing for the holidays.
Some time ago we decided buttons would be the perfect holiday goody and so, this Fall we set to work designing buttons and buttons and buttons until we selected the 20 best (the 2009 holiday edition, if you will). During the first week of December, while Brad and Heather headed to Miami for a dose of art and sun (did we mention we brought back a hambone and mustache cream as souvenirs?), the ladies of Bad Feather held down the fort and made a mound of nearly a thousand buttons.
The second week of December we decided it was time to explore our stop-motion curiosity, because of course a video is the perfect way to send a holiday message to the world. We created a quick storyboard and began cutting and taping a forest worth of paper feather trees. For the next two weeks we slowly crafted our set, including an ice skating pond and airplane. In retrospect, the hours of photographing and editing that followed were nothing…
And then there was the question of what to give to our friends and family? Cookies of course! One week before Christmas we all headed home to our respective kitchens with many pounds of sugar, butter and all those ingredients that make the word a better place. We returned the next morning each with dozens of dozens of cookies, of which we ate quite a few.
And so we packed, we labeled and we mailed. We battled the local post office which twice returned our button packages (the second time on Christmas Eve!). We designed, we edited, we emailed and eventually we all headed off (just a bit exhausted) to our respective holiday activities. Perhaps we took on too much, but it sure was fun. Thanks to all who have since sent us thanks and compliments – we hope you ate your cookies, are proudly wearing some very bad buttons, and that all enjoyed our holiday video experiment. Happy New Year!
Have you heard 2010 is the year of the Bad Feather?
A Farewell to (The Magazine of) Good Living
Just last week I sat at my desk filling out a subscription renewal card for Gourmet Magazine, debating the 2 year or 3 year option. Why not take the 3 year discount considering 10 years from now I’ll still be subscribing to and reading this magazine? How wrong I was. Monday morning when I started my usual web surfing session I came across one after another article, blog post, tweet, status update, all announcing that Gourmet magazine was shuttering.
(Heather here, by the way…)
Gourmet has been published since January 1941. My relationship with Gourmet was brief in the grand scheme of those 69 years, but I still found myself tearing up when I read the news in disbelief. For those of you who don’t already know, the only other passion in my life that rivals my relationship to design is food. Cooking, eating, traveling to find it, I dedicate much of my spare time and thoughts to the art of food and for this, my bible has been Gourmet magazine. Read the rest of this entry »
Bring on the Pickle Party!
We recently completed a small packaging project, creating a set of labels for Bradley Farm. If you happen to shop at the Grand Army Plaza green market in Brooklyn, you may know the ever-popular, bearded chef turned farmer, Ray Bradley. In addition to his beautiful produce and delicious, naturally raised pork, Ray also sells his own brand of pickles, strawberry preserves, wildflower honey and other specialty items [Read: homegrown and ground paprika. Run, don't walk].
To help get the pickles to market, Heather and Kristen headed to Bradley Farm in New Paltz to jar and label some Dills, Bread and Butters, and the almighty Lemon Cucumber pickles. Thanks to Ray’s generosity, we didn’t leave empty handed and we’ve since enjoyed the scrumptious treats in the studio. Nobody ever told Kristen she might have to wear a hairnet when she joined team Bad Feather, but if you ask her, we’re sure she’ll tell you a day in the country and her own jar of those tasty dill pickles was worth it.
Bradley Farm is at the 97th and Amsterdam Market on the Upper West Side on Fridays, and the Grand Army Plaza Market in Brooklyn on Saturdays. We also created a hilarious Ray Bradley button that Ray is selling to his loyal customers to help recoup losses from the late blight that severely damaged this year’s heirloom tomato crops. Support the farm and get yourself some pickles!
The Fruits of Our Labor
Recently Bad Feather had an opportunity to design a wine label! James Benedetto of Scotto’s Wine Cellar in Carroll Garden is releasing his ’05 Benedetto Blend and he came to us for assistance. The design was inspired by the wine-stained, handwritten label stuck on a sample bottle from winemaker, Tony Coturri.
The Coturri vineyards are sustainably farmed, the grapes are hand harvested and the wines are hand crafted. The limited production of the Benedetto Blend 2005 is a bold, earthy wine that will compliment hearty peasant food well. We’re finding the wine and the label very appetizing!
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