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by Brian Dove
October 12, 2022
Valerie and I started Big Fog in February of 2021 after collaborating with each other on a number of logo and branding projects while freelancing independently. We loved working together and how our skills and artistic styles complimented each other, so we decided to make it Official and go into business together. During a weekend-long planning retreat we started talking about what we wanted this new joint practice to become. We talked about our short- and long-term goals for our artistic practices, what kind of work we wanted to make, how we would operate as business owners and coworkers. Our dream clients, passion projects we hoped to pursue, industries and clients we vowed we would never make work for. The planning process was exciting and we were so eager to get started that, I’ll admit, we rushed the process of branding ourselves!
Now, a little over a year and a half into the life of this thing we call Big Fog, we’re stoked to share a fresh website with some new work in addition to an updated logo and visual identity for Big Fog. We’re hopeful that this refreshed online homebase will encourage us to write more about our process, share new work quicker, and pursue some of those passion projects we dreamt about at the start.
If you’ve been to our previous site, you’ll find some new projects to take a look at. We’ll be writing some blog articles taking a deeper dive into the typography choices, custom illustrations, and other elements of some of these projects in the near future, but in the meantime check out these new portfolio pieces:
You’ll also see some additions to familiar projects like our brand identity work for Blue Door and Steady Rise, both of which have been updated to include shots of their websites and other elements. And we’re stoked to see our work for TriFlorals and Among the Oaks in this new format.
As I mentioned above, in our haste to get to work designing brands for others, we rushed our own branding and website a bit. To cut ourselves some slack, we’re pretty sure it’s normal for a business to realize they need a brand refresh after spending some time actually doing the work and honing in on what the company feels like. All the planning, meetings, and whiteboard notes in the world can’t predict what your company will become once it’s actually out in the world.
After almost two years of running the studio, we have a better idea of what we want Big Fog to be. Frankly, I’ve also learned how to draw letters better and the flaws in our original logotype started sticking out like a (whole bunch of) sore thumb(s). So, we set out to refresh our own brand identity.
We felt our use of colors, textures, and illustrated elements in the original Big Fog brand were too distracting, so we stripped down the color palette—an off-black, white, and a pink for accents—to let the work on our site speak for itself. The fonts we’re using for our brand typography remain the same (Swear Cilati Display Bold from OHno Type Co. and Spoof Light from Polytype), and our new logotype is heavily influenced by the former, though it was drawn from scratch.
We’re really excited to share this new site with y’all and to continue to share new work through this channel. With social media becoming increasingly unbearable to us, this new site will be a hub for us to engage with, document, and distribute the things we’re making out here in the mountains of West Virginia. Our work through this practice is ever shifting its shape and form as it passes through and around new phases of our lives, and we’re excited to see what comes out on the other side. Thanks for walking through the fog with us.
