Articles from this Taxonomy
The City of Chicago and Ogilvy asked us to develop a new series of typefaces for the city’s new design system, with an unusual series of requirements: the typefaces needed to be open and free to anyone. From that brief, we developed Big Shoulders to become Chicago’s logotype, amplifying Ogilvy’s design direction, and to work […]
In the 1990s, Movieline was a widely-loved source of snark-flavored film journalism. In 2010, PMC Media bought the brand and commissioned us to bring it back from the dead, for which we built a CMS and interface to bring its flavor of journalism into the 21st century, with art & tone direction for each day’s […]
Measure & Fit is a small typographic engineering company, specializing in customizing fonts for specific uses and languages. For the company, we created an abstract M&F form, set it atop pastel bars, and used each bar to repesent a third of the phrase, “Thinking about & helping create better letters,” Measure & Fit’s purpose statement. […]
Butch was a punny name for a swimwear label which largely targeted a gay audience. In keeping with that pun, we designed a mark and a typography program based on blocky letters from college sports jerseys. We chose color as a contrasting design element each year, utilizing gentle pastels and floral patterns. The sites were […]
A logotype, mark, site, and stationery for former Billy Sunday Creative Director Alex Bachman, as he delves deeper into his own passion for difficult–to-find spirits. Sole Agent’s mark is a play on Chicago’s six-pointed star combined with a guilloche’s linework and detail. The site is a simple affair in WordPress with copious educational material sent to […]
From 2003 to 2011, we were Gawker Media’s de facto visual & interface design department. We designed and built the first five iterations of the company’s 13 notorious sites, developing branding, editorial styling, visual voice, and CMS functionality for each. Not every site remains online, but those which do still retain the brands we built. […]
Nima is the first portable sensor for food allergens that returns your test results in 2 minutes with 99.9% accuracy. In early 2015, Pretty developed, with Nima’s small crew, a custom typeface, mark, palette, language for Nima’s values, and design & language for a holding site, and later its initial site. Nima’s typographic and visual marks came […]
Billy Sunday is a cocktail bar from Chef Matthias Merges in Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood, helmed by Creative Director and Jean Banchet Award-winner Alex Bachman,featuring pre-Prohibition cocktails and light fare. Pretty created Billy Sunday’s branding, sales materials, menu and events site, advertising and social media messaging, beginning with austere typography based on broadsheets and posters of the […]
How to create signature brand imagery for a salon known for precision cuts and brilliant color, when we didn’t know where or how they’d be used? Make them kaleidoscopic with a square format and a central composition.