One of my responsibilities at Crosstown Concourse is to occasionally provide some services to our tenants, when needed. So when a new grocer and deli was moving into the building I was pretty excited to take a stab at helping them out with some branding issues they were having. They had gone through a designer they found online and it didn’t work out exactly how they wanted so I offered to help polish up the brand. The business is called “The Mad Grocer & Deli” and they wanted to invoke that Willy Wonka aesthetic (think Johnny Depp in any of his Tim Burton roles - particularly his turn as the Mad Hatter). So I took that and rolled with it! I took a lot of inspiration from cartoons from my childhood like Foster’s Home For Imaginary Friends, Adventure Time, and The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack and mixed in a little bit of The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy to give it that sinister edge.
Oh, and did I mention I had about 48 hours to do all of this? Yeah, I cranked this one out super fast and honestly, I am incredibly proud of it. Sadly, they decided to go in a different direction but I still got a great project out of it and learned a lot about making chaotic, hand-drawn, custom typography that feels chaotic while still being balanced and appealing. I can’t wait to bring what I learned here into the next project!