How Do You Spell YUMMY? Bolliver’s Fine Foods & Confections New Logo and Digital Business Cards

By anybody’s measure, Robert Goleman is a Renaissance Man: actor, amazing singer, magician, chef, pastry chef, wedding cake creator, nurseryman, chocolatier, orchid and cacti expert…the list is astoundingly long and his creativity endless. His most recent success story is Bolliver’s Fine Foods & Confections, take-home deliciousnesses — savories for dinner and sweets for whenever — that are flying out of his kitchen and farmers market booths faster than he can keep up. Robert came to me for a new logo and new look, and this is what we cooked up.

Stripes have been a long-time theme in his various businesses and shows, so we incorporated stripes, of course, in a pink and brown palette. We also did folding tags he attaches to his sumptuous candies. Soon we will have new labels, too, and his website is a work in progress, but we should have that within a month. (Studio Z Mendocino provides one-stop shopping for branding, just wanted to mention. From logo creation to business cards, ads and mailing campaigns to web site design and coding, stationery and envelopes to product labels, Studio Z can give consistency and elegance to every type of design and printed materials your business needs.)

We used digital printing for these, rather than letterpress. This design is not letteerpress friendly at all, but it shines with inviting color and typography at a fraction of the price. People say the new logo looks Foodie, and that is perfectly what we wanted.

We lucky locals get to have Bolliver’s treats every week. When you are in Mendocino County, look for Robert at Farmers Markets on the coast and in Willits and Ukiah. Bolliver’s is how you spell YUMMY.

 

 

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An Interview With Zida Borcich About Letterpress Printing: Zida Holds Forth on Her Beginnings as a Printer, Arcane Facts, Historical Tidbits, Relevency of a 500-Year-Old Technology, Hand Set Type and Owning a Letterpress Job Shop In the Modern World

Oh, sorry about the length of the title on this post. I couldn’t stop.

Louis Bohannan and Alan Ahtow are my dear friends who recently took a media class through Fort Bragg’s local television station, MCTV, to add yet another layer to their already incredible skill sets, and gear up for additional services they offer through their marketing-hospitality consulting-graphic design firm, ImageMendocino.

Louis produced the video and Alan was the host. I am really impressed with the results of this first project. Not just because it’s about me me me, either. These guys are great at whatever they take on and I am very grateful they chose me as the topic of their first go-round with this new art form they have chosen.

Click the button below to see the video interview, which has a link on my home page.

Or you can also see it here on YouTube.

 

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Stella Cadente Olive Oil Label Redesign

Julie and Lewis, of Stella Cadente (shooting star) Olive Oil Company, decided they wanted to redesign their labels and came to me last year. We started with some already fabulous elements from the old labels, like the shot of olive leaves and olives and their arresting Stella Cadente logo, but the labels needed to “sing” from the shelves a bit more. You could hardly read “Stella Cadente” on the old labels from two feet away, nor was the information “Olive Oil” clearly evident on the front. The colors were also wonderful, so I had a lot to work with and a lot to reproportion and rethink. We are all happy with the outcome, which you see here.

With the many strictures for legal labeling, I worked with Julie to get the information required by the FDA AND information a potential customer wants to see, all in the right order, then organized the information in a more easily readable (from the grocery store aisle), and aesthetically pleasing format.

I think graphic design is really a form or organizational thinking. What are we aiming for? What is needed and wanted? To whom is the product marketed, what demographic? For what is that market looking ? THEN, what is pretty? All this has to fit together for a successful, salable, easy-to-understand product labeling. Food and wine labeling particularly provide challenges because of strict labeling requirements. On this label we also got the nutrition information label on the back and a blurb about the company and its fantastic products.

The labels, printed at Collotype, in Santa Rosa, were done on a medium with an oil-proof finish that carries a gorgeous sheen. I am in LOVE with this paper!

The six bottles work together in a pleasing interplay of color and design that does what I aimed for: they sing from the shelves.

I love to walk down the aisle at Harvest Market and see this new look harmonizing away into the aisle!

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Apiece Apart: Mixing | Matching | Mesmerizing: Clothing Designers Who Love Letterpress

I don’t know how they manage it, but Laura Stefania and Starr Hout make clothes for you and me…even if you are twenty-something and I am hmm hmm hmm…their mixable, matchable, impeccable pieces just work and work together. They can look hip or homey, biz casual or Hepburn glamorous, perhaps depending on the attitude with which they are worn or maybe just the many environments into which they fit so naturally. Laura and Starr’s couture line of women’s clothing, Apiece Apart, is like that…chameleon-ish, beautifully cut, polished, easy to wear and to look at, and they stretch wardrobe options with a terrific mixability. We are crazy about their smart, beautiful, modern clothes for modern people of any age.

Last summer, when Laura was out visiting from New York, she came into my shop and love, love, loved the look of deep-relief letterpress on thickest imaginable papers. It was a mutual admiration society all of a sudden.

The resulting cards we made for them puts their understated logo in pearl foil on the front of an slim horizontal card. Their logo looks so good this way that they replicated the subdued look on their home page. Here is the back:

Gray ink in a modern typographical layout. One more view…

Shall we shop?

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John Ford Ranch — Grass Fed Branding

Have you seen the movie, Food, Inc.? If not, run, do not walk, to find it; watch it; take your kids; put its admonitions into practice, ASAP, for the good of your health, your family, and the planet. OK, advice column over. This post is actually about the branding campaign we did for the John Ford Ranch, which for years, and long before the sustainable movement took the world by storm, has lived and worked a sustainable, compassionate animal husbandry. Because it was always right, not because it was a trend.

After we created Amy Ford’s business cards for her own project management business, she had an idea that she wanted to surprise her mom and dad by having Studio Z Mendocino design and print up a unified look for her parents’ Grass Fed Beef business.  John and Charline Ford sustainably ranch in Willits, California, and sell their amazing product in farmers markets around the county, living the localization movement as well. They meet their customers face to face, every week.

Amy had drawn a silhouette of her mom and dad when she was just a teenager (“Honestly, I never drew another thing in my life!” she said) and we incorporated it into the logo with great results. It really has the perfect look for what we wanted to achieve, which you can see on their box label below.

And here is the front of their digitally printed business card:

and the back:

As you can see, Studio Z Mendocino, though famous for letterpress printing, has many ways to get ink onto paper, and these days, digital printing is one of them. It’s a different look with a letterpress sensibility, honed over the last 35 years of our chequered past. It also has a lower price point and four color, so there are advantages to all the ways we have to get your work into the public eye. If it’s a good design, it is a good thing, and we love the outcome for John Ford Ranch.

We made their meat labels too, and a sign for their truck and for their Ranch too, so everything has this recognizable, attractive, rustically sophisicated look. Call us for your branding needs too: 707.964.2522.

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Chance Creek Letterpress Wine Labels

Most wineries these days want their labels on rolls, but once in a while something special comes along, a smallish run, something so beautiful and perfect, that it demands the extra juju of letterpress. We have been making Chance Creek Winery’s labels for many years and winegrower Lou Bock keeps coming back for new designs. It’s a little more trouble and a little more this and that, but the results are very distinguished. Above, this year’s Sangiovese pops off the shelf with this gorgeous two colors plus gold foil label.

Here is one of the stellar Sauvignon Blanc offerings, their most popular wine.

For a very special vintage of Lou’s Redwood Valley appelation Sauvignon Blanc, which he called “Terroir” — the character of the land the grapes grow on, I devised the following label. What could possibly define an area in this day more than a zip code? What’s in a ZIP? Try a sip!

We have other wine labels we have made for Chance Creek that I will show in another post. Must get to work!

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Letterpress Printing and Me

Hello, World

I am thinking about letterpress printing today, as usual. It is so much a part of me and my life that it’s a bit like breathing. I have been a printer since 1974 or or 1975, have had this business I so enjoy and love since 1984. It was rare to be a woman in this industry, particularly in that moment as letterpress had already been replaced almost entirely by offset printing. I was not strategic about it; I just wanted to do it, the way Amelia Erhart said, “I want to do it because I want to do it.” Women were not printers, letterpress printing was not revered. Thank goodness that part has changed.

Letterpress printing changed my life and continues to enrich it every day. I am very grateful I get to do this work, have this shop, make these relationships, create something new every couple of hours. It’s so much fun and so hard and so beautiful and people always kind of fall to their knees when they see it. A long time ago I discovered there is a lot of power in letterpress printing. It has the power to capture people’s curiosity. It has the power to make everybody want to come to the party. It has the power to create a desire to know you better when you give them your fluffy, deeply impressed business card. It is an art that is a craft that is a powerful force and hardly anybody knows about it. Even not knowing, when they encounter it, they know it is different, it has something about it that tells something interesting. What is that? I think it is the hand of the craftsperson showing in the work.

Gee, guys, I have a BLOG!

Big kiss,

Zida

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