Honoring heritage and passion with color and concept. — You know when you’re like, “Man, I just want to work for good people.” Thu & Raymond over at Càphê are the definition of good people, and this project is a testament to the notion that great work comes from great relationships. Their passion and dedication to their values and…

REPUBLISHED: I’m reposting this case study because we actually got a ton of stuff made. Whenever we do a brand concept we usually present a bunch of ideas and if the client makes just one of them we’re happy–but this client went all in: Letterpressed business cards and letterhead…

Redesigning the Rail Park site to be everything to everyone. — Hello and welcome to Part I of my Rail Park ramblings. If you came here to read about the branding side of this project and learn about the evolution of logos and typography over the past few years, then GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE! STOP LOOKING. THIS ISN’T FOR…

Creating an ever-evolving visual identity for the Rail Park. — It’s been a long time since I wrote the original Rail Park case study. Almost six years to be exact, and a lot has happened since then. A game show host became our president, a pandemic ruined almost every aspect of life as we know it, a bunch of idiots…

A new visual identity for a storytelling company. — This project started where all great things start—my twitter DMs. I fully expect anyone that follows me on twitter to completely hate me, so this was a pleasant surprise. Luke Beard and I have followed each other since who knows when and have always joked back and forth about working…

Today, Chara is joining Smith & Diction full time! — Some folks already knew this, but Chara has had a full time job outside of S&D since we started the business. She’s the reason we could build a studio that we truly believed in with a client list of people we trust. We never had to sacrifice design quality to…

Branding a tiny food company for tiny humans. — The folks at Tiny approached us at a very unique time in our life journey. They were building an all organic, pre-made, ready to (h)eat baby food company and we just had a baby that, believe it or not, ate food. It seemed like the stars had aligned for a…

Creating a symbol where mystery meets meaning. — I’ve been designing for a little over a decade and running my own shop for six of those years, and I can tell you from experience that projects like this almost never come along. At the end of the day, most companies who are looking for a new brand are…

It took me two years to sit down and write this, so you’d better smash the hell out of that clap button at the end to make me feel like this was worth it. This was another project introduced to me through Ryan Greenberg, who curates a fantastic rotating artist/muralist…