Alphabet Arm Design News

As you might recall (if you’re a frequent reader of our blog) we recently designed several art pieces in the form of skate decks. They were exhibited in the gallery show, Human Powered Works, curated by Silver Oris. Look Sharp is an homage to The Outsiders, Johnny Cash, Arthur Fonzarelli, James Dean, Marlin Brando, and rebellious, greasy-haired tough guys everywhere. Props to James T. Edmondson for designing the boss typeface Wisdom Script available at the Lost Type Co-op. Now, who want’s a knuckle sandwich?

Richard Shindell is an expatriate New Yorker currently living in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Richard is a craftsman of folk songs that are often laden with rich storytelling. Thirteen Songs You May or May Not Have Heard Before is “a relatively spare, no-frills revisit of some of the songs from his catalogue.” To compliment his rustic sound, we designed his upcoming CD package with a hands-on approach. We stamped each letter of the title by hand and made sure to retain the beautifully imperfect character of the type. An archival scan of wood type (which had definitely seen better days) was incorporated to reinforce the unrefined quality of the cover. Props to Richard for embracing the stark, bold, type-only design that we think is quite eye-catching.

After designing the identity system for the surf-inspired apparel company, Invisible Sun, Alphabet Arm was hired to develop a number of merchandise designs for the company’s launch. The entire studio team jumped into the deep end to generate a cross section of styles, phrases and illustrations. Big props to Silvi Naci + Matt Kaiser for their great work. Surf around and let us know if you like what you sea.

*Completely wacked out surfer who never touches the water.

We worked with word-of-mouth marketing experts, BzzAgent, to create a new piece for the for Burt’s Bees Natural Skin Solutions BzzCampaign. It was great to work with such a recognizable brand, not to mention the fact that we happen to be devoted users of several Burt’s Bees products. The cover was printed and embossed on a lovely recycled, felt textured paper. Our objective was to design an approachable feeling brochure with a sophisticated look that suggested the natural ingredients used in the products themselves. We hope those bees are hard at work, this stuff doesn’t grow on trees.

This Summer, our fantastically talented set of interns participated in an awareness campaign for the Future of Music Coalition’s groundbreaking survey for musicians and composers. The task: create an informative, eye-catching poster design to promote the Artist Revenue Streams project. The lengthy copy led all three of the designers to take a hands on approach and experiment with a bevy of hand drawn typography and rough-hewn textures. We were very pleased to see the high level of detail (including a couple hand drawn QR Codes!) and creativity they brought to the posters. Nice work, team.

*Does It Look Like We Like Writing Blog Entries? Only when they pertain to B.A. merchandise design projects.

After re-branding the apparel company Dilligaf, we designed a number of apparel pieces for the acronym inspired business. As the new line and branding is being rolled out we don’t want to give away too much, but, here’s a sneak peek at some of the new merchandise we developed. We are particularly excited about the embroidered label that brands the exterior of each shirt as well as the phrases we developed that tie in the designs with overarching concepts.

BBFN!

Our longtime clients and friends at BzzAgent have been keeping us quite busy lately. This recent project included collaborating with the BzzAgent Marketing team and designing a piece based around the concept of “Sweet Rewards.” With bold messaging on the cover, a clear description of BzzAgent’s mission and a surprise gift of artisanal honey, this nontraditional marketing piece is sure to get attention… and it compliments any cup of tea.

Actually, Ollie Childs is not American at all, the singer / songwriter was born in England, but he has written a stellar track celebrating the states. Non-Drip Gloss Records was savvy enough to coincide its release with Independence Day. Here is the cover for the single (available on iTunes):

Being a studio with an extensive record collection of our own, we are never satisfied to stick with the expected singer / songwriter “glamour shot” album motif. Much credit goes to Ollie and his management to allow us much visual leeway. In this instance, we also didn’t want to be overly nationalistic, but liked the idea of introducing something as iconic as the American flag into the layout. We used a great deal of layered Photoshop images and textures (close to 30) to achieve the final cover treatment. We were greatly inspired by the depth, tone and lyrical content of Ollie’s songs. Here are a couple detailed views to wave your flag to:

We can’t think of a project much more awesome than branding a new go kart track for the summer. The Salisbury Speedway is soon to be opening in (you guessed it) Salisbury, Massachusetts in the very near future. You could say we are super excited to be in the driver’s seat for this type of project. Both the design team here at Alphabet Arm and the owners of the track agreed we would draw on old filling stations of the 1950′s as inspiration for the new logo and branding. For this particular project, we want to hand-draw a classic looking script to contrast the blocky “speedway” typeface. We’ve dabbled in creating custom scripts in the past, but this was a chance to really immerse ourselves in the tedious process of drawing the thick and thin strokes, as well as the hours of pulling points and finessing the bezier curves. Here are some process images.

Initially, we were very pleased with how the the “Si” ligature worked out. But, unfortunately we had to lose it and the swoopy “y” which just didn’t fit into this particular lock-up. We added some speed lines onto the “S” and “l’s” in order to give the type an extra bit of flare. Here is a larger image of the final script:

We’re currently working on a signage system, stickers, t-shirts and a custom paint job for the ticket booth and shop on site. We’ll post more images once it all comes together. Buckle up!

Heyyyyy Yooooo,My Name is Silvi and I just started here at Alphabet Arm as a Design Intern for the summer. I know you all love Alphabet Arm, and let me tell you that it is incredible being here. It was one of the happinest news I received that I would be interning here with two amazing designers and people.
I graduaded from NESAD at Suffolk University this May with two degrees in Fine Arts and Graphic Design. I’ve been attending art school ever since i was 6 yrs old. Life doesn’t make sense to me without art in it. The work that I do goes from, Printaking, Letterpress, Graphic Design, Illustration, Web design and Animation. I love how a piece of art has it’s own life, from conceptualization to realization. I’ve always known that Art was the path I’d be on for the rest of my life. Being able to translate and convey the ideas fermenting in my brain into a tangible form and then share it with the world still amazes me. I actually find the whole process almost shocking. Design should make us think, surprise, fill us with wonder and exhilarate our senses.
Being an artist makes everything I do that much more stimulating and intoxicating. Sometimes even my bike rides get so exciting, looking up at the clouds and cooking up some great idea that I can’t wait to share with the world. Being at Alphabet Arm makes all this goodness happen and I can’t wait to sink into more design as the time passes.
If you’re feeling bored and such, you can check out my work here:

http://www.behance.net/silvinaci

http://www.flickr.com/photos/silveroris

Thanks for reading, Silvi