Behind the Branding: an Interview with Jeremy Pelley
When we started rebranding our consulting arm into The Art Supply Co., we knew that strong, identifiable design would be a critical part of the launch.
As a company that has a strong sense of personality and specializes in art, we wanted our branding and website to clearly communicate to prospective clients who we are and what it’s like to work with us. We turned to Jeremy Pelley to do our branding and logo. Take a second to get to know the minds behind our redesign in the interview below!
Can you tell me a little about yourself and your background in branding?
Sure! I'm a Brand Strategist and Creative Director, and I've been working with brands big and small for over two decades.
I first cut my teeth with brand building back in high school, before I even understood I was cutting my teeth on it. It happened by accident when I had the crazy idea to open my own skateboard shop to justify my application to the "work-study" program at my high school. This was back in 1994 in my hometown of Lubbock, Texas, and I was a senior in high school. I had to make a brand on the fly, so I called it Dealers Skate Shop. I had no idea what I was doing, and it was awesome. My punk-rock/DIY attitude drove me forward, being willing to figure it out as I went—and I always did. It's stunningly easy to start your own business, and I encourage anyone to do it.
At the time, skateboarding wasn't as culturally accepted as it is now (this was pre-X-Games, and pre-Tony Hawk's Pro Skater game), but I still knew it would do ok because there were no real skate shops in Lubbock (which is technically the largest city in the area), meaning that there was a huge gap in the market. There was a store in the mall called Gadzooks that carried a small selection of skate decks, but the only other way to buy skateboards at the time was through mail order (wayyyy pre-internet), and everyone was tired of it. Plus, it helped that I knew every skater in town, and they knew me, too.
As for the brand of Dealers, I was a creative skater kid, and I just loved what I was seeing other skate companies and skate shops do at the time for graphics and brand names and voice, and I did my best to make my own thing that fit that tone. One of my favorite companies then (and now) in skateboarding was called Deluxe Distribution—they were behind pretty much all of my favorite skate companies like Stereo, Real, and Antihero, and I just loved the “superlative generic” quality of their own name. It was like the ultra-classic Standard Oil. I wanted to land on something similar for our shop, hence the name Dealers.
As a young skater punk art kid, I didn't realize I was acting as a Creative Director at that time, but I designed signage and business cards and paid my friends that were more talented illustrators to draw them and paint them for me. I designed and built ramps that eventually became a skatepark for the city in our parking lot, and then later in a warehouse when we moved to a bigger location. Our larger location was also a make-shift punk venue for touring punk bands, where we moved ramps around to form a stage and whatnot, and we called the venue Motor 308 (308 was part of our street address). We had Elliott Smith and the Softies play there, amongst many others. It was a great time and a solid community effort, as I worked with my friends and family to make it all happen every step of the way.
And what the "work-study" program meant for me was that I had truncated hours at school and a requirement to show proof that I'm working instead. I was always a straight-A, honor roll student, so I wasn't worried about keeping up with good grades—I already had that on lock. So I would get out of school early, like around noon every day, and just skate all day until everyone else got out at 3 or 4 and came to the shop. It worked like a charm, I kept my 4.0 GPA, and made my last year of high school much more tolerable for me.
I didn't tap back into brand building until a decade later, in 2004, when I got accepted into the WK12 program at Wieden+Kennedy in Portland, OR. They are the largest independently-owned ad agency in the world, and the WK12 program was "an experiment disguised as an ad school disguised as a mini-ad agency," where 12 people were picked to work together on non-profit and pro-bono work in the WK building. We had to pay to be there, but we got to get our hands dirty with real client work—not student work. And they (both WK and the clients) got fresh thinking and new blood out of the deal. It was the first time that I ever had my own computer, much less a Macbook Pro, and it was my first time playing with Illustrator, Photoshop and InDesign. It was my first time dealing with producing a campaign, and the first time I worked with a team on solving a problem from a brand-building perspective. Even though we were within an ad agency (and not a true branding studio), it was clear how much an ad agency was able to affect a brand's trajectory.
At the end of the program, I didn't get hired at WK, but I did connect with the folks behind Ace Hotel, and got hired as Lead Art Director to help create the seminal brand of Ace Hotel as we know it today. At the time, only the small 28-room Seattle location existed, and they were looking to expand, but use the Portland hotel as the new base, as the Seattle one was not up to snuff from their view. I helped to open Ace Hotel Portland, Ace Hotel New York, Ace Hotel & Swim Club in Palm Springs, and retroactively worked on updating parts of the Ace Hotel Seattle brand.
In 2009, I started my own branding studio with my friend Fritz Mesenbrink, and we called it The Official Manufacturing Company, or OMFGCO for short. We ran that studio together for 11 years and worked on brands big and small from all industries, and that's where I really sharpened my skills as a Designer, Creative Director and Brand Strategist. It started with just the two of us with a handful of clients, and when I left in 2020, we were up to over 20 employees and clients all over the world.
I'm now doing Brand Strategy and Creative Direction on my own, and my wife and I moved closer to my Cuban family in Florida to get a break from the overcast days of the Pacific Northwest and soak in some more sun. I'm driven by working with people and brands that I can believe in, and that are contributing something positive to their communities and to the world. I have long posited that we don't need more stuff in the world—we need better stuff. I'm here to make better stuff, and to make things better.
What was the process like in developing the TASC's logo? What were the inspirations you had in mind?
A brand is much more than a logo—in reality, a brand is everything a brand does. A logo is just one small part of the ecosystem of a brand. So, to develop the logo mark for The Art Supply Company, we first had to start by understanding the brand, and at the time it was all under the brand Casey Droege Cultural Productions, or CDCP for short.
When considering a rebrand like this, I like to frame my approach as similar to a gardener's: the goal is to clear out the weeds and help the desirable plants thrive, not to simply cut everything down and start over. You trim certain branches off entirely so you specifically don't kill the tree, and so the tree will ultimately grow stronger and more intentionally. So, our first task was to decipher the weeds from the flowers, decide what needs pruning, and dig in.
Even though Casey had some brand name equity in the community behind CDCP, and it technically still exists in her ecosystem of brands, it just wasn't the strongest name for what she wanted to do moving forward, so it was worth re-examining. Her last name is hard to pronounce, and even the acronym version of the name was a mouthful to say and remember. Plus, it just didn't sound as fun and approachable as I knew she wanted her brand to be. If anything, it sounded vaguely corporate by accident. I mean, she's an art consultant—her brand vibe should be artful! And to me, art is fun, so I thought it should be fun, too.
As a name, I thought the vibe of The Art Supply Co. felt fun, fresh, and new, and I wanted to use the double meaning to our advantage. Mostly everyone in the western world associates art supplies with being a kid, and with that association comes a certain feeling of creative playfulness and freedom. Freedom from being too cool or too perfect. Freedom from judgment of self or others. The other meaning of the name is that they are literally supplying a selection of curated artworks and art consultation to brands and people that need it, so the name is as poetic as it is literal to what they do. Supplying art. The Art Supply Co. It just makes sense. And, it's easy to remember.
The name came to me randomly, as many names do, and I pitched it to Casey along the way and she dug it. Naming something—especially re-naming something—almost never goes down that way. Usually its rounds and rounds of names, and lots of hemming and hawing and discussion of what's the best choice. Not this time. One and done. Part of that came from Casey and I simply being on the same wavelength for so long leading up to our brand work together. We both had the same gut feeling that it felt right, so we ran with it.
The typeface chosen was Windsor was inspired by the 1970s arts and crafts era, as Windsor was a common font found on packaging at the time. It's friendly and approachable, and the lock up was designed as a nod to that era as well. A simpler time. I originally placed the wordmark into a couple of drops of primary watercolors (another nod to art supplies) and knocked out the type from the drips, but I like that Casey's team took the mark and ran with it, adding some organic shapes and motion graphics behind the type. It came out very cool and fun, and I think it works really well on her site.