CBI is a small, family-owned and operated dental lab in Port Orchard. The challenge of this corporate redesign was to incorporate the friendly, family nature of the business while retaining the clean and professional aesthetic that is expected in a dental brand. This project encompassed a logo redesign and business collateral, including stationary suite, business cards and a lab slip.
A graphic standards manual was also created for practical guidelines on how to put the logo and branding into appropriate use. The logo uses a lettermark approach and a clean and vibrant color palette was chosen. Rounded corners were used to imply the shape of a tooth without being overly explicit.
The Bell Jar is a story of a young woman’s early years working for a fashion magazine and her subsequent spiral into clinical depression. A semi-autobiographical account of Plath’s own life, it is often dark but also surprisingly irreverent and funny. My biggest challenge with this assignment was finding the perfect cover photo. It took me countless hours of searching online photo catalogues and I just couldn’t find the perfect photograph.
I finally found this photo called Dominique by Sergio Albiac (www.sergioalbiac.com) that I felt matched my idea as closely as possible. For the interior, I wanted the text blocks to be quite small and constricted, to mimic the voice of the female narrator, who felt trapped under the “bell jar” of depression. I am quite proud of how this book turned out.
Dedicated to long-distance love, this piece was a genuine joy to work on from original concept to final product. It was fascinating to learn how the letterpress process works as I had never done it before, and was fun to see my hand-drawn art come to life in this manner. I have certainly caught an unexpected letterpress bug, and look forward to more letterpress projects in the future.
I chose copper for the typewriters to give it an old-fashioned feel and a warm grey for the script. I love to write and I’ve always loved old typewriters, and I wanted to express what it feels like to communicate using the written word over long distances. I am happy I was given the opportunity to explore that in this piece.
