BGP’s Spyglass Spotlight is a series of commentaries dedicated to showcasing some of my design projects, the clients that commissioned them, and the way those projects took on creative lives of their own.

Umami Treats and Gourmet Delectables is a Detroit-based catering company, founded by Chef Robin Steele in 2004. As a company, Umami has come to be known for its specialty items — delicious chocolate chip cookies and pastries made from scratch. When Robin first introduced me to the concept and business plans, I had reservations about the name. In comparison to many small bakeries and cookie companies, Umami seemed either too exotic or too ethnic for the typical confection brand.

The word Umami is of Japanese in origin, loosely interpreted as ‘good taste’ or ‘deliciousness’ although it has many levels and many meanings. Oxford English Dictionary advisor Michael Quinion sums up Umami as “The fifth taste, sometimes associated with a feeling of perfect quality in a taste, or of some special emotional circumstance in which a taste is experienced. It is also said to involve all the senses, not just that of taste. There’s more than a suggestion of a spiritual or mystical quality about the word”. During a conversation, Robin emphasized that food that achieves the Umami taste looks great, smells great, tastes great, feels great and even sounds great when it’s being eaten. She believes that there’s a spirit of love and passion that transcends the cooking process and causes an almost orgasmic awakening of the senses for the person enjoying the food. After days of research I came to the conclusion that Umami is one of those words like “Zen” — conceptual, experiential, and steeped in cultural dimensions that would probably be considered enlightened by most Western schools of thought.

Because of the factors mentioned above (and Chef Steele’s personality), I decided that only an unusual design was going to work for Umami Treats. A logotype wasn’t enough. And although I personally love how the word Umami looks in its native Japanese Kanji, when the average American sees Asian writing on a package design they tend to assume it’s a product for Asians. With Detroit’s population being a little over 81% Black, 12% White, 5% Latino and 1% Asian, this brand definitely needed mass appeal. I also needed a somewhat surrealistic representation that would tie the brand name in with the product without being too symbolic. The final design had to have a hint of an old fashioned enclosure yet still look new enough to convey ‘progressively traditional yet fresh and organic’.

I went through quite a few ideas before coming up with a rough sketch I was ready to present. After importing the sketch into Adobe Illustrator, I reached a bit of an impasse about halfway through the manual tracing process. Because of the size of the cupcake in proximity to the cookies, it didn’t look like a cupcake. The top looked more like a baked mushroom cap and the cupcake liner resembled a stiff curtain at a cheap hotel. And where I called myself having fun with the idea of alternating orange and canary yellow beams radiating from a golden Sun, ethnic symbolism crept back into the picture… this time in the form of the “Rising Sun”, Imperial Japan’s World War II flag.

A few days later I spoke with Chef Steele and learned of the proposed Umami Treats coffee house in the works. Whether I was caught up with inspiration or frustration, I ended up completely scraping the cupcake and sunbeams. Instead, I added a coffee cup off in the distance of a warm, vague landscape. Luckily, this helped the chocolate chip cookies gain a greater presence in the final design.

Umami Treats — Brand in Action

Original Format: VOB MPEG-2 (stand-alone DVD)
Duration: 00:01:06s

This video was produced for Umami Treats as a cost-effect commercial demo to help her pitch the business plan. I figured the best approach was for potential investors to feel like they’ve seen the coffeehouse so I decided to create a mock commercial spot and burn it to a self-playing DVD. Since there wasn’t a budget for live actors, voiceovers or broadcast-quality production, I decided to produce this commercial spot using Ubuntu Studio (Linux). Although the address noted at the end was the coffeehouse’s proposed location, as of the date I completed this video it was still at the corner of an empty strip mall that was under construction. To “create” the coffeehouse I used a piece of stock footage of a Detroit street, interior shots from a couple of lounges in that area, and the smiling people and live music shots are from my photo archives — taken while hangin’ out with friends at Cafe Nema on U street in Washington, DC.

One morning in late February while brainstorming ideas for another client, I overheard some talking heads on CNN (my back was to the TV). The chatter was about how President and Mrs Obama used an Air Force helicopter to fly back to Chicago for their Valentine’s Day.

Something about that inspired me to follow up on a silly design idea — a slick, very functional, professionally printed full-color 5.5″x4.5″ flyer. The back was to remain blank so I could make a small menu template. Robin could then use a labelmaker program to print the menus and slap them on the back. Some menus would be for her cookies and other confections. Other menus would be for her catering services. The final result was to be an attention-grabbing leave behind with menu info that she could change without requiring complete flyer reprints. Simple, humorous and cost-effective. The next variation of the concept involves an over-sized postcard that can be filled out and dropped in the mail.

Over the years I’ve grown to appreciate keeping in touch with many of my old clients. A great fringe benefit that comes with what I do is that when a client is a genuinely good person, sooner or later we usually become friends — even if we’ve never met.

Chef Steele has been one of those long distance friends for a long time. One afternoon she forwarded a photo and a text message that had been sent to her phone. “Please tell Rhyn to stay Awake in class. Thank you and hope you can make it to open house at seven. Anthony S______ – Rhyn’s Fifth hour teacher.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. The young lady is Rhyn, Chef Steele’s daughter, caught in what is best described as a familiar story with a modern twist. Back in the day, if you got caught snoozing in class usually the worst that happened was a rude awakening and ruckus of laughter from your classmates. Now, here I was, one of many distant recipients chuckling at a digital Kodak Moment almost right after it happened. Inspired by the humor of the moment and the coffee-like smoothness of her complexion, I loaded the image into Photoshop, added the comic elements and emailed it back. Robin took my image and had it turned into a 4.25”x5.5” refrigerator magnet. It’s a great example of how promotional ideas can (and often do) happen as a result of happy accidents. Rhyn loves it, although we still don’t know why she fell asleep that day in the first place.

Although Umami Treats has faced a tough uphill road in these economic times, Chef Steele has proved to be very sharp when it comes to thinking (and investing) in promotional materials to help grow and strengthen her brand. With the way things look, this is just the beginning.

And, in case you’re wondering, the cookies are phenomenal.

Until next time, thanks for reading. Be well and be blessed…

– Max Nomad

Ask a 3-year old boy to recite the alphabet and he may miss a letter here and there — but ask him to pick out Spongebob Squarepants or Dora the Explorer and he’ll get it right every time. Ask a 26-year old man to name four people he voted for in the last election and he probably can’t tell you; ask him to name a social website he uses these days and he’ll probably say Facebook, Twitter or Myspace without a second thought. Ask a 52-year old Business Owner to give you the name of an off-the-shelf Accounting program and s/he will probably say Quickbooks or Peachtree. Whether a consumer is 4 or 84-years old, everyone living in modern civilization is conditioned to live in a branded world. One of the biggest mistakes small businesses make is believing that somehow branding doesn’t apply to them or their products and services. This plays a huge part in why many of them fail.

Throughout my Graphic Design career I’ve worked with many types of businesses ranging in size from a startup Ostrich farm to car dealership chains to Fortune 1000 companies. Along the way I’ve seen how giants can be taken down by mosquitoes, misfits can become moguls, and smart design — along with strategic marketing — can turn water to wine, even on a shoestring budget.

A brand, by definition, is an identifiable entity that makes specific promises of value.

• Identifiable — can be easily picked out from similar things. Typically this is done with something visual like a symbol (a logo).
• Entity — something with a separate, distinct existence.
• Specific Promises — the claims that a product or service makes, such as FedEx with their on-time delivery, Altoids “œcuriously strong” breath mints, etc. These claims are promises to the consumer.

At the start of every client logo design project I stare at a blank sheet — whether it is a piece of paper or a blank drawing board on my screen — then visualize myself in the Arena Scenario: I imagine that I’m one of my client’s typical customers standing in the middle of an arena packed with thousands of people. They’re all from companies that provide the same products and services that my client does. All of them are reaching out to me and calling my name. Who do I go to — and why?

As strange as it may seem, I consider it a sort of 21st century Zen Koan, a question or riddle intended to open mental perceptions to new truths behind the everyday images of reality. It may take years to arrive at a single possible answer because koans don’t have right or wrong answers. With the Arena Scenario, each creative project always determines how I visualize it. For example, if I’m creating a logo design, color scheme, and motif for a client’s company image, I picture myself as standing in the middle of that arena completely deaf and illiterate, solely relying on what images and symbols I see. If I am writing copy for a corporate profile or a website, I am blindfolded and mute, relying on the power of the words I hear. I use this method because it helps me abstract my thinking enough to connect with many of those things that help the client connect with their customer base.

Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Israeli pottery artisans used it. Feudal Japanese swordsmiths used it. Blacksmiths throughout Europe and Colonial America used it. Cattle breeders throughout the Wild West right on up to Henry Ford and the early car manufacturers used it. Why? Because branding creates an emotional bond between products and services to those who sell them. It also creates a feeling of involvement with a sense of higher intangible qualities that surround the brand name and logo. To put it into beter perspective, think of it as that same feeling we usually get when we see familiar (but unknown) faces in our favorite spot and finally get an opportunity to introduce ourselves to each other. Suddenly what was just an overlooked part of the scenery has become a real person, someone worth getting to know better. In this context, the rest is up to us to keep making great impressions each time we meet. That, my friends, is the point most small businesses overlook — familiar, trustworthy relationships — the simple secret behind why branding has worked for thousands of years.

(more to come on this later)

– Max Nomad

I’d been invited to a garden party, the kind where everyone seemed to know that Mozzarella goes with a Chianti Riserva, Gouda goes with a Riesling, and anyone that didn’t know at least had the foresight to memorize which wines matched their favorite cheeses. A friend of the family was about to announce her candidacy for City Council. And even though the scene was very diverse, I felt out of my element. I swallowed my pride and did the smiley mingling thing, complete with empty compliments and forgettable small talk, until I encountered a white-haired old man sitting off by himself under a nearby gazebo. He reminded me of a Dick Van Dyke after one too many shots of Jägermeister. I noticed he was wearing a Polo shirt, khakis, sandals, and studying a small plate of chipolata sausages as if they were from Mars. Somehow, I knew this guy wasn’t a typical wine-n-cheese snob.

During our introductions I never caught his real name. At first I thought he was sloppy drunk because of his slurring until he revealed that he was still recovering from a major stroke. When he learned that I had recently graduated with my design degree, the conversation moved onto common ground. He sounded like he had dreams of becoming the next Paul Gauguin if he hadn’t been pulled into the family business. Although he now owned several large hotels at the oceanfront, he talked about them like most people talk about a relative that just got arrested again for being drunk in public. He did most of the talking. Slurred and tangential at best, he always seemed to make a point and, for whatever reason, that point always had a connection to Art.

“Every now and then you meet folks who truly appreciate beauty in the world,” he said as he stared off at some distant, unspoken memory, “but the truth is, most people love junk. Garbage.” Give them a T-bone steak entree, grilled to perfection, and they will add ketchup without tasting it. Give them a cup of fresh brewed Jamaica Blue Mountain coffee and they will dump cream and sugar in it before taking a sip. Make the Perfect Martini and they will claim it’s weak unless it was made with some harsh rotgut vodka. The list goes on…

Over the years and many clients later, rarely has a week gone by that I haven’t been faced with the truth of that conversation. As a professional Graphic Designer, whether you’re doing print, web, or mixed media, you secretly have to determine which type of person you’re dealing with in order to have a chance at making that client happy. The only limits on creativity are the ones we set upon them — project by project, budget by budget, and within the boundaries of what that client will and won’t understand about beauty and function.

– Max Nomad