Task

Make a body of work revolving around a central thesis for Alfred University’s senior shows.

Solution

Create a lifestyle brand to fully utilize all of the resources and design skills that the university has provided me with.

Date

Fall 2018 - Spring 2019

skills involved

Branding - Marketing - InDesign - Illustrator - Photoshop - Lightroom - Printmaking - Woodworking

Ideation

Towards the beginning of my senior year at Alfred I knew that I wanted to create a brand and a store to go along with it, but I didn’t know what I wanted the subject matter to involve. I started writing and sketching about my thoughts and the things i’ve been surrounded with my entire life. Throughout this brainstorming, I noticed how I have always lived in a rural and secluded area (including the university I attended.) The name “Middle of Nowhere” stems from this. It is how these isolated environments are always described in conversation, and I wanted the brand to be recognizable and something that would stick in potential customers heads.

Branding

Before I went any further with the smaller details of the store, I wanted to lock down the branding of the company. After more sketching and thinking, I wanted the typeface and color to exemplify the mixture of rustic subject matter and a contemporary style. I drew different formats of typefaces on paper, and then took the ones I liked the best and made fonts of them in Illustrator. The one that I ended up going with was an idea where I pulled inspiration from old whiskey barrel type faces but gave it a clean and vectorized look. I chose the color that I did because of it’s boldness and warmth so that it was inviting and eye catching.

Marketing

Advertising the “Middle of Nowhere” was something that I wanted to get started on before I made any physical products. I began with creating an Instagram. I posted pictures of photos I took while I was gathering inspiration to give viewers an idea of what kind of style was involved in the company. After that, I moved onto advertisements and promotional images to get people interested. Once I had a following on Instagram, I started to design a website for the store, create a brand book, and a magazine insert to expand the advertising of the company even further.

Physical creations

The last step before actually setting up a store for my show was to make all of the designs and ideas into tangible and sellable items. I had to categorize them somehow, so I made three different sections of the store. The three I decided on were hunting, camping, and fishing. The first thing I dealt with was making final t-shirt designs for the categories. I had worked a lot with printmaking and woodblock printing early on in my design studies, so I decided on a woodcut style for the shirts. I wanted other products to sell as well, so I made hats with the “Middle of Nowhere” font I made on them. I also made coasters with patterns laser cut into them for each section as well as cutting boards. In the same fashion as the coasters were made, I made a display table for each section of the store so it would better categorize each part of the company.

Store Creation

The last step in this entire process was to make “Middle of Nowhere” into a physical store. Researching different store layouts was important to make an effective space to sell my merchandise and display my show. I wanted it to feel cozy while also having an intriguing environment. After looking at what similar stores do, I concluded that a simple and organized layout with highlights of the products and design was the best approach. Everything was laid out to scale in Photoshop before I put together the actual store.