Studiofluid’s branding and design work for Tango Mango is featured in the book, FIRE IT UP: Building Restaurant Brands that Blaze.

If you are a restaurant owner or promoter, this book is for you. It spells out the 10 indelible rules of restaurant branding, gives marketing advice, presents ideas for a social media strategy, and includes branding checklists and case studies of restaurants that are doing it right.

Our work for Tango Mango is featured as a case study for how to create a restaurant brand that catches fire. Here’s a clue: Your brand is not your logo. Want to know more? Here’s the link to order your copy.

The book is authored by Joseph Szala, the creative director of Vigor Branding, an agency in Atlanta, Georgia.

Some of the branding agencies with featured projects include:

Avroko, New York City, NY
Bernstein-Rein, Kansas City, MO
Brains on Fire, Greenville, SC
Helms Workshop, Austin, TX
Knoed, Chicago, IL
Mucca Design, New York City, NY
Pentagram, New York, NY
Seamless Creative, Astoria, NY
Stir, Kansas City, MO
Studiofluid, Los Angeles, CA
Tad Carpenter, Kansas City, MO
Push, Orlando, FL
Vigor, Atlanta, GA

Big thanks to everyone that contributed to the project and to Joseph Szala for publishing together such an informative and timely book. Now let’s get to work making the world a tastier place!

I made it back from Outdoor Retailer in one piece (barely, as you can see from the photo). Stuart, Bobby, Jeanie and Tom were holding down the fort while I was out like a kid in a candy store among the latest gear offerings.

Photos are prohibited at the show. This is mainly because product is nine months from hitting stores, and the policy deters would-be copycats from sending photos to Asia to create instant knockoffs. Of course, I couldn’t resist a few snaps that I figured were innocuous.

Just a few tents outside.

The scale of the show is a bit hard to grasp, actually. Salt Lake City grows by 14,000 people for a few days and the Salt Palace convention center is jam packed with more stuff than you can absorb in 3 days of walking the floor. I would know, since I tried.

Plaster sculpted like water.

As expected, product presentation ranged from straightforward and bland to inventive and exciting. Some of the booths that stood out to me were the textural panels from Columbia (pictured above), ice sculptures at Teva, huge black and white photography at Brunton, wind tunnel at Yakima and stretched fabric dividing panels at North Face. Of course this was only the tip of the iceberg for notable displays.

Other companies engaged with the audience in memorable, relational ways, rising above the clutter and waste of typical schwag. Gerber Blades had the clever photo-op with the bear climbing a tree (photo at the very top). Camelbak offered a bicycle-powered rickshaw service to surrounding areas. Royal Robbins had an espresso bar running non-stop. Vivobarefoot offered sessions of video analysis with an expert in running biomechanics. Osprey, Patagonia & Kleen Kanteen partnered to serve beer in reusable stainless steel pints (Yes, the beer starts flowing at 4:30p).

Slacking isn’t so easy.

Gibbon Slacklines had a competition area for people doing freestyle moves. (think balance beam tricks on a flat, springy rope). When I was there, a 10 year old kid with a rat tail was showing everyone up. He looked to be sponsored. They also had a more mellow demonstration area where anyone could hop on and give it their best. Let’s just say that my best (pic above) involved a lot of falling off.

Bookis, Ben and Barefoot Ted.

Anyone familiar with the book Born To Run will recognize the name Barefoot Ted. Reading the book is highly recommended, and so is meeting Ted. Now I’ve done both.

Grass typography made me smile.

Thanks to the generous folks at Garmont for the opportunity to attend the show. The outdoor industry is one that we know quite well here at Studiofluid, and we’re looking forward to the opportunity to work more closely with some of the people we met.

See you at the winter show in 2012!

A few years back, Goodwill of Southern California rolled out a Halloween campaign to help boost seasonal sales. The campaign features of cast spooky characters, all developed in the same visual language as the tightly cropped face of the original Goodwill logo (in the lower right corner).

Many companies would be timid to use their logo in a such a non-standard way, but in this case it was the right call. Today the campaign still feels as clever, fresh and as fun as ever—from the wheat-pasted posters around Los Angeles to the cute advertisement on youtube:

Goodwill Explains:

Halloween is the biggest month of the year for Goodwill Southern California. That’s why we focused on this time to create a new attitude for the brand dating back to 1902—one that strongly connects with Goodwill’s 18-34 year old target. Our on-line ads, wild postings, college kiosks and newspapers, TV (cable, YouTube, viral) and word of mouth marketing campaign generated the highest sales volume for Halloween in the history of the organization.

Congratulations to The Miller Group and Goodwill on a job well done. Creative courage leads to business results.

On Saturday, I spent the better part of the day at Cal State L.A. reviewing portfolios in rapid-fire succession. Students from all over Southern California and beyond gathered to present their work and get feedback on their work from design professionals.

It was an honor to be included in the event, and it felt good to give back to the design community. I saw some great work coming out of schools Otis, Art Center and Woodbury University. Overall, I was impressed with the level of thought and communication. Hopefully my feedback was helpful. I’m looking forward to participating in the next one.

Note to students: The main question I want to see answered at a portfolio review or an interview is: “What are you trying to communicate with this piece and how did you accomplish it?” If you’ve got a solid answer, you’re well on your way to having a strong portfolio.

Thanks to the folks at Cal State L.A. and the organizers from AIGA who put together these great events.

Will we be seeing geometric packaging hitting the shelves in the near future?

If it’s up to the imagination of students Dzmitry Samal and Petar Pavlov maybe we will. These Buckminster Fuller-esque packaging structures mark a distinct departure for Doritos and Coca-Cola.

Clearly these multi-faceted structures may pose challenges to implement. And of course the increased costs and environmental impact would need to be factored in. Do you think we’ll be seeing more of this come to market in the food and beverage packaging? Maybe in another industry?

What are your thoughts?

The folks at LogoLounge have selected our work for inclusion in their prestigious Master Library Collection…

We’re both honored and stoked to say the least. The award and recognition is for our logo & brand identity for Half Badger Records.

The email said:

“Your work has been selected for inclusion in a remarkable new LogoLounge project, ‘Animals and Mythology’, in the new Master Library series…”

the messsage continued… “What is the Master Library series? Like our existing (and continuing) LogoLounge book series, the new Master Library books will bring you exemplary logo design work from creatives around the world. Our first book in the series, Initials and Crests, is at the publisher as we write and promises to be a new best selling series from Rockport in the model of LogoLounge.

Unlike our original series, though, each book in the Master Library series will focus on a very specific logo design category, to wit:

Initials and Crests
Animals and Mythology
Typography
People
Shapes and Symbols
Nature and Food
Arts and Culture

We hope to include your work in the the Master Library series, Animals and Mythology.”

The Master Collection will be published by Rockport and should be released in July 2010. Amazon already has it available for pre-order.

We’d like to welcome Clara and Katarina, the Design in Transit duo, to Los Angeles, California and the US of A.

These two adventurous ladies are here from Germany, taking a tour of the west coast and hoping to gain graphic design experience in the process. About a month ago, they emailed from Germany to set up a time to come by and get a tour of Studiofluid on their arrival in L.A.

As short-term interns, they’ve contributed to an advertising campaign and website design. But it hasn’t been all work. We’ve shared a few meals together, have taken a few sightseeing tours of some highlights to check out in Los Angeles. Next week I think we’re going together to check out the Echo Park Time Travel Mart for some packaging and general design awesomeness inspiration.

I’ve also introduced the DIT ladies to a few other design firms in the area that might be interesting for them to visit. If you’re in Los Angeles, San Francisco or maybe even Portland and you want to collaborate with Design in Transit, they’d love to hear from you. To invite them out for some good American beer or just say hello, you can get in touch at: designintransit @ hotmail dot de — and tell them Studiofluid sent ya.

The design work we’ve been doing for the Pasadena Symphony is starting to pop up throughout Los Angeles.

The branding system we developed for the Pasadena Symphony and Pops has been extended into to various print collateral, from Banners and signs to posters and promotional flyers. Right now, the Metro Rail Gold Line that connects Union Station to Sierra Madre is running the “Take Your Ears Out for the Evening” ad campaign, announcing the 2009-2010 Symphony Classics.

Thanks to the Pasadena Symphony Association for being such a fun and adventurous client, and thanks to Mikio Osaki and the talented students of the Agency @ Art Center College of Design for the ear artwork.

Photo courtesy of Tim Harwick.

UPDATE: Check out more of the project in the work section, and visit the new pasadenasymphony-pops.org.

Today our DDC poster arrived, packed in a handsome, sturdy tube complete with a shipping label crafted with care.

The 24×39″ poster is crammed with over 1000 logos / experiments / and inside jokes created by master craftsman Aaron Draplin. The extra effort oozes from this one, complete with two additional pages for navigation and explanation, and some other goodies thrown in to boot.

Don’t go buying one of these unless you’re prepared for the inexplicable pull that will have you cross-referencing the location key and liner notes, hovering over this poster for the better part of your day.