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…

A case study about designing packaging to stand out in a crowded field while remaining true to your brand & having some fun along the way. — 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…

A little while back we got a cold email out of the blue from a very different kind of client. A client with 48 years of experience under… — A little while back we got a cold email out of the blue from a very different kind of client. A client with 48 years of experience under their belt. A client that didn’t want to seem hip or trendy at all. They wanted a strong mark that would make…

Getting lost while creating wayfinding systems. — In 2017 I took on a few jobs that scared the shit out of me. This one was by far the biggest and scariest. The BOK building is an old technical school in South Philly that is a few years into becoming a co-working maker/artist/generally interesting person space. Smith &…

Branding for tiles. Tiles for Branding. — We were intro’d to Protz through our bud Brad Baer over at Bluecadet (lots of B’s there) who said, “It’s a fun project…and they’re willing to be a bit playful.” SOLD! Anyone who’s looking to get a little weird, I can get down with. So we’ll start you off with…