Spotted!

I stumbled upon the Booth Ranches Black Box I drafted In the produce department at the Price Cutter in Springfield, Missouri, while shopping for ingredients for leek soup. The box is cool. The soup was hot.

Repacked for Teens

Edgy and irreverent.

Those were the orders from Hasbro on a re-packaging, re-positioning assignment for three of Hasbro's classic board games.

Pictionary, Trivial Persuit, and Taboo were canned to appeal to a younger demo with a bit more pocket change, but a shorter attention span in this hyper-digital-handheld-device-driven era we’re all traveling through.



We presented two themes with designs to match: Co-Ed Wrestle and Shock Talk. The games were miniaturized and made portable by using a squat can and decreasing the size of gameboards, pawns and whatnots.

Using found imagery and period appropriate typography, the cans take a spin in the mosh-pit of retail punkery with hopes kiddies and their mums are eager, or at least curious enough to slap down a few bucks for a little gameplay.

Yes we do.

Marlin Rocks.

The best projects are the ones where you can do whatever you’d like. The best-of-the-best projects are when you do something you’d like to do for yourself. Marlin Rocks is just such a project.

Marlin was visited by some folks from “they-who-must-not-be-mentioned” and to say thanks for taking a look at us, we put together two iPods with music selections from some of the crew.

But what made it real cool was a video introduction of the songs which Judith Garson and my man Quentin Brown put together. They went around and had folks present their pick for the playlist. We set the iPods to play the movie first thing when the recipients turned it on.

Would anybody like to send me an iPod?

Tin Man

Coffee cake is great. But Sandy’s Sour Cream Coffee Cake (SSCCC) is an out-of-body experience.

In an effort to express the uniqueness of SSCCC Sweet Street wanted to offer the snack in a tin through their cybernet store.

I utilized off-the-shelf SSD assets and invented a few new ones to create a brand dress that felt Sweet Street but uniquely its own.

We shipped off the concepts to the big heads in Reading, PA only to have the whole project evaporate into the misty mountains of the Ozarks.

Oh well.

Booth Bear Label

Booth Ranches, a citrus grower in Orange Cove, California, was founded by the great-grandson of Times Mirror founder Harrison Gray Otis’s namesake, Otis Booth

Ranked number 181 by The Forbes 400, Mr. Booth leaves the day-to-day operations to his daughter Loren. She stumbled into my studio on a referral by interior designer Napier Hill, where we began working to develop the Booth brand.

The Otis Orchards label uses a variation of the iconic California Grizzly Bear from the state’s flag standing sentinel over the fruit of their labor. The bold graphic was designed to pay homage to the Booth family’s long history with Los Angeles and the Golden State.

Lea & Perrins Steak Sauce

How does one extend the brand of an iconic staple like Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce? Aw, read on dear blogged, read on...

I had the opportunity recently at Marlin to redesign the existing L&P Steak Sauce bottle (the final is to the right). Now, you might ask yourself, “Steak sauce? I didn’t know Lea & Perrins did a steak sauce?” Well, they do. But they haven’t made great inroads on the category leader, A1. And it’s no wonder. The plastic form factor and bottle dress is apeing grocery store chain's generic packaging big time. And nothing says quality like plastic. Some condiments do fine encased in a synthetic shell, but something that goes on steak…? It must be like drinking champaign from a plastic cup.

To kick off the project, Rob Nelson, AE and account director on Heinz lead us in a product cutting of L&P, A1, and Heinz steak sauces. A1 was the familiar standout, but the L&P tincture surprised us: It was clearly the better steak topper.

The mandatories for the design included parchment, the L&P logotype, the shield, burgundy, and the shape of the label and bottle. Given all this we came up with the expected and several unexpected solutions (my favorite is highlighted as the bigger bottle up top).

We were striving to make the new bottle family with the familiar worcestershire sauce bottle without creating confusion with consumers. In the end, though the design isn’t a compelling re-introduction of the sauce, the final bottle feels like an old friend. Which is to say, it’s been around forever, just misplaced and forgotten in the back of the refrigerator’s throng of condiments.