One thing we’ve found from working with caterers is that their clients are usually in a constant state of worry.  It’s hard to organize a large event, and it’s especially difficult if it’s not something you do on a day to day basis.  RSVP takes great pride in helping alleviate some of that worry.  During one of our first meetings out at RSVP’s headquarters, we stopped on our way out to examine the numerous framed letters on the wall.  All of them were thank you letters from RSVP’s clients, and they certainly had an impact.  It’s one thing to have a company tell you they’ll take care of everything… it’s quite another to hear the company’s clients say the same thing.  For this reason, we gave these client quotes high priority on the layout.

RSVP also had a bunch of great photography lying around which we were eager to show to their prospective clients.  Thus, rotating diptychs and triptych are employed on every page, ensuring that a client is always seeing a fresh image.

Anyhow, we’re glad to have the site up and running!  Give it a look and let us know what you think.

We’ve also recently launched a couple new websites, one of which is RSVP Catering.  We wrote a whole blog post about the site which we’ll be posting early next week.  But feel free to check out the new site in the meantime!

Our main goal with the website was to visually reproduce what makes Taylor so much more than just your average hoagie shop.  In our first meeting with the Taylor team we were blown away by the sheer number of different textures one finds in their restaurants – brushed concrete, re-purposed shipping pallets, hot-rolled steel and exposed brick to name a few.  Even during our first meeting (before the contract was even signed!), the site began to take shape in our minds.  By using the same textures in addition to other visual elements harvested directly from the restaurant, we think we’ve succeeded in creating a virtual space that feels like it could exist in the real world, and accurately reflects the look and feel of Taylor Gourmet.

Additionally, we thought it’d be fun to include some stop motion animation to give the site a little extra pizzazz.  While waiting for the site to load, visitors are treated to an animation showing the various steps that go into creating a Taylor hoagie, and there are other pieces of stop motion scattered across the site (with more soon to come post-launch).  All in all, we did our best to make each section of the site as unique and branded as possible.  The Press section, for example, isn’t just a list of links to articles, but rather clickable, movable, sortable news-clippings taped up on a wall.

So there you go – the new TaylorGourmet.com is up and running, go take a look!

It was just a few weeks ago that La Palina Cigars asked us if we could design and produce a website in time for their summer launch parties. It was a tight deadline, and a few of us may have drank more coffee than normal to complete the project, but we met it. Right on schedule, La Palina Cigars went live this past Wednesday just in time for the NYC launch party that was recently written up in the Wall Street Journal. We’re looking forward to attending the DC launch tomorrow.

A distinctive feature of the La Palina cigar is its band which features ornate, gold-flake embossing that frames a hand-drawn portrait of owner William Paley’s grandmother (the original “La Palina”). It seemed only right to re-adapt such a beautiful feature for use on the website. The Victorian flourishes, embossed and serifed text, and warm hues on the site reflect La Palina’s rich history.

No one understands the importance of a well-designed graphic identity better than a marketing and communications professional. Well, our own marketing and PR guru came to us looking for a new identity, one with a clean aesthetic and a touch of humor that captures the personality and personal service the firm provides.

The JML Consulting logo and palette were developed from bits of Jenn’s own quick signature and a collection of her favorite hues. Rather than include a basic web address that was exactly like the firm name, she chose to pique the interest of potential clients by using something a little more fun. NomathNoscience.com alludes to the firm’s more creative and tongue-in-cheek approach to marketing, and while it’s just a placeholder page at the moment, it will eventually become the blog. Stay tuned for the full site launch!

]]> http://ripe.com/blog/2010/06/02/jml-brand-launch/feed/ 0 http://ripe.com/blog/2010/05/26/42-degrees-rebrand-website-launch/ http://ripe.com/blog/2010/05/26/42-degrees-rebrand-website-launch/#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 15:48:02 +0000 Ian http://ripe.com/blog/?p=366 A couple weeks ago we launched a new branding system and website for one of our new favorite clients, 42° Catering.  We don’t throw the word “favorite” around often, but if you feed us like 42° has fed us, you’ll be right up there.  For example, if you visit their new site, know that we got to eat all that food right after the photographers finished shooting.

We really enjoyed working on their brand as well.  As always, we strove to create a mark that wasn’t only visually stimulating, but that made the viewer think.  The mark is reminiscent of a degree symbol, clearly, but in it one might also see plates, or glasses, or various other cooking and eating implements.  The business cards and comp cards reflect the circular nature of the logo by employing an arched die cut across the top of each.

On the website we wanted to visually focus on the food.  Chef Frederik De Pue creations are not only amazingly tasty, but amazingly beautiful.  Thus we crafted a Flash banner (again, using the same arch – brand consistency and all that!) that displays mouth-watering closeups of some of his dishes.  Another fun aspect of the site – we included a nifty, jQuery powered Contact slider on the top of every page of the site.  Contact pages are, for the most part, unnecessary for sites of this size and they generally end up feeling devoid of content.  Furthermore, the type of content they do provide is the kind that should be readily accessible whenever the client wants it.  Thus, a miniature contact page, if you will, is accessible on every page of the 42° site.

Now, if you’ll excuse us, we’re off to drool over the food shots some more.

And just for fun, here are some behind the scenes shots from our photoshoot.  First shot: Chef Frederik De Pue plating some tasty salmon rolls.

Chef Frederik De Pue lighting something on fire (or doing a flambé if you want to be technical).  We can’t quite remember what he was cooking in this shot, but rest assured, it was delicious.

Senior Designer Maryam + the photographers + the 42° crew including Frederik and Dani sitting down to a meal at the close of the photoshoot, as if we hadn’t already eaten enough.

This was an incredibly fun project for us to work on.  It’s not very often that you find a client who’s as open and creative as the matchbox crew.  The concept – a Prohibition era speakeasy with down-home cookin’ – gave us an excellent starting point. The logo, for example, is reminiscent of marks of the era.  While it has been streamlined to a certain extent, it maintains a good amount of the art deco flair that was so prevalent during the period.

For the menu, we opted to create a whole newspaper.  On the inside is the menu itself, but on the front and back we included articles about the origin of the restaurant and fun ads.  There are a few things we really love about this concept.  First off, unlike most menus that start to look dirty and crappy after a few months, these menus gain more character the longer they’re used.  An “aged” looking newspaper only adds to the feel the restaurant is going for.   And when the menus reach the point of no return and must be disposed of, they’re easily recycled.  What’s more, the cheapness of newsprint makes it economical to print new versions every once in awhile, which in turn gives Bulletin the ability to write up new articles, and for us to create new ads.  So what you see in the menu today may be completely different a few months down the road.

The website draws heavily from the interior of the restaurant itself.  On one of our first meetings with the matchbox crew we got a sneak peek at the amazing metalwork they planned on installing in Bulletin – it had come straight from the old Philadelphia Convention Hall – and we knew it had to be part of the site.

Also, if you visit the site, make sure to give the radio a listen.  There’s some great music on it – Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Helen Kane (Betty Boop) along with others.  What’s more, George Savvas, talented voice actor and friend of ripe, made several era-appropriate commercials and spots which we’ve sprinkled throughout the radio’s playlist. Thanks George!  (Give his agent a call if you’re interested in his services!)

So go try out the restaurant!  One of the benefits of having restaurants as clients is that more often than not they’ll feed you.  ripe was invited to the soft opening for family and friends over the weekend, and let us tell ya – that’s some damn good food.

It’s been a long process to get the mobile restaurant up and running with a lot of design elements to go along with it. With the truck wrap, menus, packaging, stickers, clothing, patches, iPhone app and website… we’ve been busy. The end result is fantastic and we couldn’t be more proud!

Many thanks to Farhad, the Ambassador of the Republic of Sauca, for his willingness to work with some of our more creative ideas and for coming up with some very unique ideas of his own, to JML Consulting for their excellent PR work, and the team at VSAG for their tasty menu development.

So check out the website, find where the saucamobile is currently located via Twitter or the websites’s mapping widget, and head on down to check out the mobile restaurant itself to see the rest of our work!* : )

*As a special offer to ripe fans, print out this blog post and bring it to the Saucamobile to receive a free sauca wrap! Limit one per customer; offer expires February 28, 2010.

The Vucurevich Simons Advisory Group (VSAG) is responsible for a lot of the hottest restaurants not only in DC, but around the country.  We recently worked with them when they were repositioning local restaurant Agraria to be more closely paired with its sister restaurant, Founding Farmers.  Working closely with the VSAG team we completely revamped the restaurant’s image — from their logo and name all the way down to the color of paint on their walls.

Soon after finishing the Agraria (now Farmers & Fishers) project, VSAG asked us to redesign their own website.  With its massive amount of content and VSAG’s numerous services, it provided ripe with a challenge that was quite different than we’d come to expect from restaurant-related businesses.

The final result of our efforts is the recently launched VSAG.com.  It incorporates various navigation methods so that different user types can find one that suits their needs, a new blog so that the VSAG can more easily communicate with their clients, and all sorts of tightly organized content.

Along the way the client also decided that if their website was getting a facelift, their collateral could use one as well, so we designed some sexy plastic (recyclable, of course!) business cards, and did a little work refining their logo.

We’re extremely happy with the result, as is VSAG.  We cornered Dan Simons, one of VSAG’s principals, and asked him for a quote:

“We are thrilled with the way the site turned out – it’s garnered us great reaction from our clients and from our partners, and more importantly, it’s complete and comprehensive,” said Dan. “The ripe team provided us with great ideas, responded to our vision, and have helped us move ahead with our international visibility.”

We look forward to doing business with you in the future, Dan!

We just finished another project fairly recently as well; a logo for a program called “Art World” at the Cincinnati Art Museum.  Art World provides kids visiting the museum with a hands-on, fun approach towards art appreciation.

We knew that we’d hit it off with the client right off the bat when they told us in our first conference call that they didn’t want to see any sort of logo that resembled a “finger-painting or a bunch of kids holding hands or whatever.”  We couldn’t agree more… And yet, when faced with the task of designing a logo for children, it’s hard not to just pick up your pencil, doodle for awhile on a piece of paper, and call it a mark.

However, we’re very happy with the final product.  The logo, which we have come to call “the propeller”, was meant to represent some of the things that are found in childrens’ art while not falling into any cliché.  Thus, within the propeller there are several shapes that children often draw (stars, flowers), but the logo itself does not appear as a childish drawing.

It’ll be up in our portfolio fairly soon.  Feel free to give us your thoughts!