Trend Setting Design » Advertising & Promotion

Package Design – Apple Chutney

Joseph Cotten — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 20:38:17 +0000

This is the first product from a new company, Satisfy Your Soul. They are two professional chefs in Burlington, NC who use all natural, locally-sourced ingredients to create unique recipes inspired by their worldwide travels. This Apple Chutney is inspired by the authentic flavors of India, and uses Winesap apples from the 2010 North Carolina apple harvest. The curry blend is unique to the Satisfy Your Soul chefs.

They asked me to take their vision for authentic international flavors, chef-created recipes & locally sourced ingredients and create a label design that would communicate all of that.

We also did all the copywriting for this. Jessica came up with a Story Panel that describes the chefs’ inspiration.

Photography by Kevin Lee of Studio Place, Inc. You can reach him at (336)854-8828.

Quality Landscapes Tee Shirt Design

Joseph Cotten — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:27:54 +0000

Atkins Ad Agency in Roanoke Rapids, NC hired me to design a new tee shirt for one of their clients, Quality Landscapes. The client wanted a tee shirt that would appeal to its 20–30 year old employees. Something grunge, modern and organic. In addition, the client was initially open to changing their old logo (seen in the above graphic at far left) to something more current.
I began by using floral patterns with grunge/antique treatments to add texture and interest. As usual, I was working from a rebranding standpoint with the tee shirt—seeing the shirt as a way to introduce a new brand for Quality Landscapes. The result was a design that was certainly grunge and organic, using typefaces that communicate exactness with friendliness.
The client ended up deciding to not rebrand themselves because of cost restraints. My task then was to use their existing brand and logo on the tee shirt design, but add a more modern feeling. I used the “Q” and leaf design to inspire a tree illustration (see the far right of the above graphic). Notice that the leaves on the tree are pulled from the logo’s leaf design. In addition, I used their logo’s current green colors for the shirt’s inks.
The client was thrilled with the final version, so even though the process took longer than I’d hoped, the end justifies the means!

Personal Project – Set a Trend Be Yourself

Joseph Cotten — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:30:32 +0000

Jessica came up with this slogan, in true copywriter style. “Set a Trend…Be Yourself” encapsulates a major part of our message as branding consultants and identity designers. The first (and most important) step for a business to become a trend-setter is to be yourself. Know who you are and be that! You are unique, and you hold a unique place in your sphere of influence.

Our message to clients is to not be content with simply following trends. Don’t be trendy! Be steady, strong and confident in who you are. This will lead you into a place where you set the standards—where you set the trends for others to follow.

I was inspired by this slogan to create a personal art project which conveyed it. If you’re curious what I used, it was done in Photoshop using a photograph of an old grungy cafe tabletop taken by Caleb at Lost and Taken, a photo of cracked concrete taken by Jay at Bittbox and a photo of a ladybug that I found at iStock Photo. The font is Bree Extrabold from Type Together. I made adjustments/changes to all the source elements, for instance making Bree into a stencil font, adding a leg and doing some dodging/burning to the ladybug, plus lots of tweaks to the coloring of the concrete and tabletop photo.

I ended up using this as a free giveaway on Twitter & Facebook, making it into a computer desktop wallpaper and a printable greeting card.

Wellspring 2010 Event Promotion

Joseph Cotten — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 17:31:14 +0000

A longtime client of mine, Wellspring Women’s Ministry is changing things up this year. Wellspring does a large retreat each year, but in 2010 they are doing three smaller regional events. This essentially takes the large scale yearly event and distills it down into two days, localized to three areas around North Carolina. My job was to rebrand this event to show the new identity and provide promotional materials that would quickly and easily generate excitement and encourage people to register for their local event.

I was not given the theme of “Presence”, in reference to the presence of God in the life of a Christian. In describing it, I was told that the colors of heaven and earth: literally grass, dirt, sky and clouds were the preferred colors to be used in the event’s advertisements. I decided to make “the colors of heaven and earth” part of the main copy because of the mystery it implied to the event.

This piece was followed-up with small postcards sent via direct mail to local area women with details about their specific event, costs, etc.

Prospectus Design

Joseph Cotten — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 16:16:37 +0000

I was a part of the group logo design project for a new church plant in Boston, MA called Netcast Church. During the fundraising portion of the process, the church plant team decided they needed a good prospectus to send to potential donors. A prospectus is a common tool for business startups which shows highlights of what the proposed organization will accomplish and how they will do it. In the case of a church plant, this means communicating the spiritual and cultural needs of the target area, then describing the toolset of the proposed church planting team as well as a timeline and budget.

Matt Chewning, pastor of the proposed church plant Netcast Church asked me to design a prospectus for them that would appeal to a broad range of potential donors. I was supplied with the data for the prospectus as well as a few photographs of the area. I decided to use a key part of the church’s vision—clear unapologetic declaration of the truth of God’s word—as inspiration for the look of the prospectus. I used large typography, full bleed photographs and a somewhat austere look to show this grand scale/loud/clear/declaratory theme.

The result? That remains to be seen, as the prospectus has just been sent out to the team, but so far the response is overwhelmingly positive. Several church planting experts have said that this is the best prospectus they have ever seen. Hopefully that will translate directly into increased giving to this wholly worthy church plant. I am honored to have been able to be a part of helping get this ambitious project off the ground!

Overflow Event Poster

Joseph Cotten — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 14:00:59 +0000

This was done for my church to advertise a city-wide worship and prayer meeting. I came up with the name and look for it – the imagery of a city being flooded represents the worship and prayers of the people “flooding” the city with hope and blessing.

This was a somewhat new direction for me, combining black and white photographs with vector illustrations and layering effects into a single unified whole.

The typefaces used include two of my grunge favorites, Megaxoid and Adler. Can’t beat em!

Outdoor Banner Sign: Affinity Art Gallery

Joseph Cotten — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:34:10 +0000

I am a co-curator for the Affinity Art Gallery in Kernersville, NC. The Affinity Gallery is a non-profit art gallery that showcases local artists’ work in a commission-free space located on Main Street in Kernersville. The gallery space is in fact donated by my church, Kernersville Community Church. We repurposed the interior hallways of the building to be a professional gallery, complete with track lighting, neutral wall color and reinforced picture moulding. In February 2010, we had our second exhibition, featuring all new artwork from local Triad area artists—all but two pieces were done by people that do not attend the church.

For the grand opening, I designed postcard size invite cards, but because we are a non-profit gallery, we do not charge commission on the art that sells, so our budget stays pretty small. Our purpose as a gallery is to serve local artists by helping them get their work in the public eye for free, and to help people that appreciate art to be able to more easily view and purchase local art.

For the second show, I was able to get a sponsorship from Uprinting.com, who has listed us in their Gold Sponsorship U-Community program. Because of that, we were able to afford to use Uprinting to print two 6 foot wide × 3 foot tall outdoor vinyl banners, with fade-resistant inks.

My design features two primary elements: the Affinity Art Gallery logo and the words “Open Weekly”. Of secondary visual importance are the words below “Open Weekly”, followed by the gallery’s slogan, placed vertically along the far right edge. The road that runs in front of the building is a 50mph zone, so the banner had to be economical in what it communicated. There was not sufficient room to have much text, since that would lead to no one reading it at all! Below is a photograph of the finished banner, mounted to metal stakes.

Photograph of the vinyl banner at the gallery

Promotion: Awaken City Church Grand Opening

Joseph Cotten — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:54:55 +0000

Part of the branding project for Awaken City Church included a promotional build-up to their Grand Opening in January of 2010. The whole project has used an “underground” “power to the people” kind of vibe, so instead of investing into traditional media such as radio or television ads, we saved costs by creating business card-sized invitations which the church’s startup team could hand out and post in public places. Had the budget been higher, we would have done some actual graffiti using the logo, but without prior arrangements, we could get arrested for that. In addition, I designed a tee shirt which was given out to everyone that attended the Grand Opening event.

Front of the Awaken Tee Shirt

Back of the screen printed grey tee shirt for Awaken City Church

In addition, I created a large format exterior sign for Awaken. They are currently meeting in a large conference center, so the signage needed to be semi-permanent. The solution was to create a high quality, durable exterior vinyl banner in full color. The size is fifteen feet wide × seven feet tall, with plenty of reinforced grommets to prevent wrinkling. The quality of the banner is such that it can be used indefinitely as the church moves into a permanent location. We were able to print at a high dpi so that the concrete cracks and background Greensboro cityscape are able to be seen, but don’t distract from the important data. The impact of a 15 foot wide banner is quite noticeable.

Exterior Vinyl Banner Design for Awaken's Grand Opening

This project included several other elements, which each have their own portfolio entries:

Awaken City Church logo and brand design

Website Design

Revolutionary Love Card

Joseph Cotten — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 20:14:19 +0000

Another project for my church, Kernersville Community Church (KCC). This was a business card-size promotional piece done for a long-term KCC campaign to bless the surrounding community. During the hard economic climate, we decided to do something to tangibly help people. KCC members go out and pay for random people’s needs, for example, a KCC member will go through a fast food drive-thru and buy some food, then pay for the order of the next person in line. Or a KCC member will go to a gas station, and leave enough money to pay for someone else’s gas. Then, the KCC member leaves one of these cards with the store clerk to give to the person who just received the free gas/food/etc. The idea is to bless people with absolutely no strings attached—not even an invitation to come to KCC. We feel that so often, Christians are guilty of bait-and-switch tactics to lure people into joining a church or other organization. We wanted to find a way to bless people in real ways and ask for absolutely nothing in return. Enter the Revolutionary Love card.

This card needed to be small, attractive, easily read and friendly in its presentation. I did all the design and copywriting for it. I also used the card to subtly push the realigned KCC brand, as see in this article. I used the same corporate identity definitions of font and color to do it, while keeping the purpose of this particular card clear. The cityscapes on the card are Greensboro and Winston-Salem, to large cities around Kernersville, and the most likely location the cards would be used.

Tee Shirts for DayStar

Joseph Cotten — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:51:17 +0000

I always enjoy designing tee shirts for screen printing because it’s such a unique process. You see, when designing for screen printing, one can’t use gradients, shadows or other “effects” in the design. The reason for this would take too long to explain; the point is that it is a fresh challenge to the designer to translate the vision into a single color, broken down into halftone dots and solids. In addition, the color of the shirt fabric becomes the background of the design, whereas in print production, you usually have white as the background color. This adds another new element to the design process.

These shirts were used to give to first time guests at DayStar Christian Fellowship. Their target demographic was college educated 25–35 year old men and women living in Greensboro, NC.