The serifs on the letters provide a certain stability, and the flourish from the h seems to hook inside the c in anchor. The curve of the elegant lettering creates a nice juxtaposition with the anchor symbol and the words beneath it.
Drew Melton wasn’t one of those kids who was obsessed with lettering and pursued it as his life’s calling. Quite the opposite, in fact. “This idea of becoming an illustrative letterer didn’t occur to me until I dropped out of college and I was running my own design company. I was burnt out, and following amazing designers who were focused exclusively on lettering,” Melton says. ”I really sucked at it at first.” So he took a few months to focus solely on lettering and started the Phraseology Project (http://phraseologyproject.com), where people would submit phrases and notations, and he would letter them and post them as practice. Talk about trial by fire and exposing yourself to possible critics! Well, it worked. He started getting hired for his lettering work, and he hasn’t looked back.
In 2012, Melton and his wife, Kelsey Zahn, started Anchor Paper Co., a high-end online stationery store. “We were trying to find thank you cards after our wedding. Being a designer, I hated everything we looked at, so we decided to make our own. Unfortunately, we didn’t get them made in time to use ourselves,” he explains.
Although anchors are pretty prominent in logos (there is even another Anchor Paper, which is a wholesale paper distributor), Melton and Zahn have an aversion to the symbol. “My wife and I have anchor tattoos on our wrists—we got them done on a whim in Colorado before we got married. It’s been an icon in our relationship, and since this is our side project together, we decided to call it Anchor, even though anchors are everywhere,” Melton says, laughing.
“The cards are very minimal. I wanted to create a product that allows users to add value to it with their handwriting.”
—Drew Melton
After crafting the anchor logo, Melton hand-lettered the company name. He says, “The lettering is absolutely meant to look ‘anchored.’ My goal with the branding and design of the cards is meant to be timeless and reliable for years to come. I am trying to stay away from current trends with ‘anchor,’ because keeping up with trends is impossible.”
Each greeting card takes on its own distinct typographic style as well. For instance, “Good Morning” feels sunny and bright, and “Remarkable” feels bold and proud. “The biggest thing I had to do was keep from overdesigning,” Melton says. “We letterpressed the designs onto 180 pound paper, it’s beautiful, but at the end of the day what makes the card valuable to someone is that there is all this white space for them to write a personal note. The design just elevates the importance of the interactions.”
The serifs on the letters provide a certain stability, and the flourish from the h seems to hook inside the c in anchor. The curve of the elegant lettering creates a nice juxtaposition with the anchor symbol and the words beneath it.
Various greetings hand-lettered by Melton.
“I’ve worked with Sean Farrell on this project for the past four years. I put together the original logo when I was living in Michigan. He is a talented icon designer, but he doesn’t do lettering. We often worked on branding projects collaboratively. His wife runs a large online food blog called Dashing Dish where she posts beautifully photographed healthy recipes regularly.
“Since designing the first logo, Sean has commissioned me to do redesigns twice, and we may even be working together again soon on another redesign. As Dashing Dish grows and matures, we are discovering the needs and personality needs to change. This is not efficient, but it keeps Dashing Dish from getting stuck in the past. The project has grown up with us. Every time we work together we create something great. It’s a fun project to be connected to.
“This project was started by my wife Kelsey Zahn (http://kelseyzahn.com) two and a half years ago when we moved to Los Angeles. We had just gotten married and she was going through a major career shift from a steady, well-paying job to freelance styling. In the meantime, to keep busy, she started this project in order to maintain her curiosity about food, life and style. This project has never been a commercial success, but I love the purity of this personal product. It has an ease about it both in the design and the content. She still posts five days a week even after her freelance has picked up considerably.”
Jon Setzen and Kevin Hockin devised the designer/foodie dream project. They came up with the idea of doing a boutique ice cream truck business around Los Angeles based around quality ingredients. The Smile logo is simple and straightforward and looks amazing on the 1950s-era ice cream truck.
1C D Joy Rubin Creative C Joy Rubin Creative 1D D 903 Creative, LLC C SVC Construction
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