I'm very proud to announce a new project–a logo for East Bay culinary genius Daniel McChesney-Young's new line of hot sauce, El Diablito. El Diablito has no existing logo or branding, and as any designer knows, staring at the blank slate is equal parts exciting and intimidating. However, the creative juices are flowing as fast and furious as the hot sauce itself, so any nerves are being quieted by inspiration (and likely capsaicin).
The first couple sketches I produced meant to convey the concept alone, a cartoon baby devil with a fire-pacifier, and a baby sugar skull with hot pepper and fire decoration. However, upon sending these to Daniel for feedback, he told me how much he loved the likeness of the baby devil drawing to old-fashioned Orphan Annie characters. So, it looks like that visual style may stick around to the next round. I'm thinking that I'll try adding a color halftone to really sell the old-school comic vibe. However, I'm not at all satisfied with the lettering yet, so that will be getting a major revision. I'm definitely going custom hand lettering, and have broken out my circle templates and triangles to give the hand-drawn type a more polished, geometrical look. After the first initial sketches, I'm feeling SO inspired and into the mindset, that I'd like to turn it into an entire custom font. Stay tuned to see where it goes!
In related news, I recently had the pleasure of designing the branding and label for Gigwalk's hand-crafted hot sauce. Playing off the fact that the sauce is made with (incredibly spicy) ghost peppers and perhaps inspired by the recent Halloween holiday, I came up with the name "Haunt Sauce" and (adorable, if I do say so myself) Pac-Man-esque ghost pepper illustration. See what I did there?