CLIENT: The Indiana Historical Society
PROJECT: Decorative Graphic Panels for the Stardust Terrace Cafe
I’m a sucker for Victorian store fronts, script fonts, antique photos, old flourishes and Hoagy Carmichael. So when asked by the Historical Society to help illustrate the musical story being told within the new Stardust Terrace Café, I jumped at the chance. 6 graphic panels together tell the story of The McArthur Conservatory, The Butler Music Company and The Gennett Recording Company. The approved panels were then embellished with props from the exhibit department. Once the store front alcoves and space were re-constructed, shadow box windows were created for the panels to be displayed in.
Historically, all three music entities have played an important role in the shaping of the musical heritage of Northern and Central Indiana. To display a difference between the three identities, colors and logotypes were assigned to each. This is the wonderful part of the freelance experience: collaboration.
IHS let me choose the colors palette for each company in addition to offering color suggestions for the store front color palette. From that I was able create a style guide to base the identities and colors for each company.
STYLE GUIDE
I’ve created style guides that are much more complex and multi-paged than this, but for a small project, I only needed to keep track of the fonts, color and art elements to be incorporated.
A style guide is extremely helpful when documenting the process and approved elements of a freelance project. It can be as simple as a one page pdf or if the concept is to be incorporated into a long standing brand identity you can develop a style guide to involve the audiences to be marketed to, messaging, Pantone colors, font, font sizes, punctuation, tag lines, identity system development and sub-brands.
Stop by the newly opened Stardust Terrace Café and observe up close the final product.
