Recently, I opened my big pie hole and agreed to engage in a 75 HARD challenge. If you’re unfamiliar with 75 HARD, you can look at the website here and listen to the podcast here. Personally, Andy Frisella is 100% not my cup of tea, but I can respect the sentiment behind the 75 HARD challenge.
Anyway, in this, you gotta follow a healthy diet. Currently, my goal is to train my body to maintain with the proper amount of calories before I take it into a deficit because for most of my adult life, I’ve been in a constant deficit with no balance. When I would eat anything that took me over my body’s adjusted calorie intake, I would gain weight. I figured I’d pick a diet and stick with it for 75 days—after all, it may help me regulate my eating better. I chose to go lacto-pescatarian (which I am struggling with hardcore…I’m tired of fish and seafood and tofu) which means no red meat and no poultry.
Ironically, I was recently commissioned to design a logo for a startup barbecue business for a couple of friends. Unfortunately, due to my diet, I couldn’t accept payment in the form of delicious smoked ribs and had to settle on regular Benjamins. (Feelings are hurt, tbh.)
They were pretty straightforward with what they wanted: saloon style letters, possibly on a background, with warm colors. They also wanted to see a bull’s head. I was provided with an inspiration image with open communication and started in black and white with the concepts.
After the first round, we nixed the bull’s head as per the client’s request. Too Texan, they said, and the direction was supposed to be Maryland-style barbecue. I am not a BBQ connoisseur, so I took their word for it. They also shared a photo of a mockup they did to give me an idea of what they wanted to see.
I took the liberty in this next round to move forward into color.
Before getting there, though, there was a brief convo about the font.
I was presented with a specimen for the font, Beardsons, designed/released by Artefak in 2020. I went ahead and purchased the font and set the type, sending this back in an email:
I was sent a second mock-up because they really wanted “pit beef & bbq” stacked underneath.
Naturally, the tedious route is the way we went. I also made sure the “pit beef & bbq” were stacked in the next round.
It wasn’t too bad, actually. It took a lot less time to move the points of the “S” to thin it out and make it consistent with the other letters. As noted earlier, I moved into color and played a bit with background shapes.
The shapes gave the actual logotype a sign feel, which is fitting because Mr. Hicks is a sign guy. Give the sign guy a sign, I say! Plus with that look, it’s easy to use it in die-cut applications like stickers, magnets, and, yes—signage.
I, too, felt better with this font choice. It was less clunky, and almost kind of organic and beautiful in a Cheers-starring-Ted-Danson-and-Woody-Harrelson-in-the-year-2022 kind of way.
Originally, I was going to try and add a texture to the background shapes. Like slate. The only issue was, I couldn’t find the exact look I was going for and realized a vector version of that texture would leave the file unnecessarily large in file size, so I left it alone and instead used gradients to my advantage to at least get the color layout the way I was imagining.
The client loved it, too! They chose one without the shape/frame and “black” (it’s a gorgeous charcoal gray, thanks) copy as well as the one on the circle. What’s great about the circle choice is the fact they can get two of these printed/cut on vinyl with some UV laminate on top and slap those bad boys on either end of the smoker, since, if I remember correctly, their smoker is cylindrical!
The one thing I had to slap down was adding a longhorn back in that was made of smoke. While it’s a possible thing to add as imagery, I’m not skilled in transforming smoke into a very custom shape. Maybe later on I can learn how to do that, kind of like how I learned how to “design neon” in Illustrator.
From what I understand, the shapeless one will be used for apparel. I’m pretty interested to see how it all looks. I’m also curious as to what vendor they’re using for the shirts. I mean, I know a couple of guys if they need it.
Final thoughts…
I’m actually pretty pleased with this. It was done in, like, a week, collectively, which…is really fast. I think the “S” could probably use a bit more tweaking, but for now, it works. The colors are pretty warm and inviting and I can see this adorning the label of a barbecue sauce bottle.
It also gives off beer label vibes. Imagine a can of Hicks Beer.
Once I have images (courtesy of the clients) of the different applications, I’ll add them to this post.•