What Even Is A Brand?
If you ask the average person on the street, there’s a pretty good chance they’ll tell you a brand is a logo. And, they’re not wrong for thinking of Nike’s iconic swoosh, Target’s globally recognizable bull’s eye or the classic yellow arches we use to tell us which highway exit to swerve onto when searching for lunch mid-road trip. A logo is certainly a part of the story but it’s not the whole tale. To grossly oversimplify it, some see branding like naming a character, Bust Out sees branding like breathing life into a character’s soul.
Putting Down Roots
Ready to move beyond their family foundation namesake, we used all our creative chops to expertly craft a new brand identity for Rooted Philanthropic. Bust Out’s approach to branding is every bit as rigorous as our approach to software. We work collaboratively with clients to scrutinize tones, shades and line weights. We build on inspiration evolving from grayscale into intentional, meaningful hues. Bust Out conducted several design thinking sessions to draw out themes, patterns, and vibes. We spent hours developing our understanding of what it meant for the organization to be rooted in the East Side. When we finally put it all together the satisfaction was palpable.
Empowering the Next Wave
H2O for Life creates service-learning opportunities designed to engage, educate and inspire youth to take actions to solve the global water crisis. A long-time Bust Out partner, they called on us not only to create their branding mark, but the entire illustrated look and feel of their new web-based curriculum for middle school students, Water Guardians.
Combining the whimsical nature of hand rendered illustration, the subtle texture of brush and pencil strokes, and the energetic movement of water, the final logo resembles both a defensive shield and team crest. It playfully announces the program designed to equip kids with the know-how to effect global change.
Finding the Soul of the Brand
Bust Out brings a unique insight to the art of branding. Whether it’s exclusively digital or a hybrid execution, we build brands that resonate with their respective audiences by infusing into every identity and direction the essence of the person(s), company or organization being represented by the mark.
Since 1996, Interact Arts has opened wide their doors for artists with disabilities and the audiences eager to experience their work. Through workshops and collaborative sessions, Bust Out engaged deeply with Interact Arts to find the right balance of colors, opacities, and organic forms and typography that reflected energy invested in, and spilling forth from Interact Arts into the community. In the end, we proudly created a fresh new brand identity that encompassed a variety of elements and gave them the flexibility to adapt their brand system to fit the dynamic nature of their work and creative spirit.
Design in Zero Gravity
OK Go is easily one of the most visually creative, technically architected and musically evocative pop-rock acts in the industry today. They orchestrate brilliantly complex, mentally stimulating spectacles (music videos turned STEM tutorials) and champion exploration and imagination, especially in children. As part of the OK Go Sandbox website, Bust Out worked with the band to create branding for a contest in which middle schoolers would send an art project into actual space. Tasked with finding the perfect blend of “spacey” and “techy” the end result was a psychedelic love child of a mark afloat in a zero gravity design system as bright and hypnotically trippy as a lava lamp.
Branding Our Own
In aiming to solve the barrage of brand new, COVID-caused, socially-distanced difficulties our performing arts clients faced, Bust Out ended up envisioning a new future, a new format for reuniting performer and patron, essentially – a digital stage that couldn’t go dark. We created Pennant, a custom-branded, subscription-based video content platform to give musicians, artists and art organizations a way to buy-up streaming real estate and proudly plant their flag; allowing performing artists to engage directly with their fans and generate recurring revenue.