Atomicdust’s Porano Pasta Branding Wins Best in Show from AIGA St. Louis
Each year, the St. Louis chapter of the AIGA (the Professional Association for Design) hosts its Design Show, a gallery event showcasing the best and brightest design work from the region.
Atomicdust has entered work for the past nine years. Each year, Katie Werges and I would select and submit projects we felt were worthy of the show. The show tends to lead toward more artistic, high-concept work than your typical marketing tri-fold brochure, and we always had a lot of projects to enter.
We spent hours taking photos and screenshots of our work, printing them on our large format printer, glueing them to gator board and attaching lists of the people in our company who worked on each project, trying to remember who did what, making sure everyone got credit.
The night of the show, we always followed the same ritual. Katie and I would ask everyone from our agency to go with us. We told them we were meeting at the same place we always met: Chava’s Mexican Restaurant in Soulard. Over nine years, rarely did anyone take us up on our offer.
But we’d still sit there, eating bottomless tortilla chips, wondering if our work made it into the show. Hoping that our efforts would be noticed, and that we’d be included in the gallery of St. Louis design hotness.
We’d arrive at Mad Art Gallery, say hello to the designers we’d bump into that we only recognized from their companies’ websites, and scan the perimeter for our work.
We performed our ritual year after year for six years, only to find out time and time again that no, our work was NOT selected.
It would drive me crazy. The waiting. The anticipating. The ultimate disappointment.
We would tell ourselves that AIGA was a “different” type of awards show, and that our work wasn’t “artsy” enough to be appreciated.
But we’d also tell ourselves that we would try again next year.
Then, four years ago, two weeks before the night of the show, we got an email with the subject line “Congratulations.” A project that we entered was going to be featured in the show.
Finally! We couldn’t believe it. We were happy, excited, amazed, until we came to a grave realization that would have saved us a bunch of time and heartache through the years. The AIGA sends you an email if you’ve won.
Fast forward three years. Not only were nine Atomicdust projects selected for this year’s show, but our branding for Porano Pasta was selected as Best in Show. It’s an honor that reminds us of the days when all we had were tear-stained tortilla chips.
We wanted to share some behind the scenes photos of the branding and design work in progress:
Some initial concepts.
Katie hiding badly behind our mock-up sign.
These meetings are a typical occurrence at Atomicdust. “Is this cool? What should we change?”
We were super stoked about the wooden sign! The wood and resin were just incredible.
Idea boards helped us make sure the branding stayed consistent as we designed.
We wanted the space to feel like a fast-casual retail environment. I hated to see these posters leave our office.
Remix of illustrations to help fill some walls. We were inspired by Paul Rand/1950s graphic design. This is a cool example of it all coming together.
A copywriter hanging pictures. When the restaurant was coming together, we felt a real sense of ownership over all the details. Everyone got involved.
First time seeing into the restaurant at night with everything in place.
Atomicdust crew enjoying friends and family night as A Tribe Called Quest played over the speakers. Such a great match.
The imaginary city of Porano.
Here’s to brave clients and collaborators!
Paul Rand, Miroslav Sasek, and the graphic design style of the 1950s-60s inspired the project.
I say this often, but it seems like an appropriate ending. St. Louis is a city with tremendous creative talent, from design and branding firms, digital agencies, ad agencies, independent designers and students. The amount of talent and perspective is staggering, and we’re happy to be a part of it.
If you’re local and in the position to hire agencies for creative work, consider a St. Louis firm. There’s no reason to send work out of the region. If you need proof, stop by COCA’s Millstone Gallery and check out this year’s Design Show, up through the end of the month.
Kudos to all the featured designers. (And to those who haven’t made it yet, your year is coming.)
