Commence Studio® is a bespoke research and design firm ... We craft purposeful brands, products, and eCommerce experiences that turn conscious values into company value. We collaborate with large & small companies that we can inspire to change the world.

Commence Studio

We are a creative agency that's about forward movement

hero text

Projects Slider

Logo on blue bg; spices product photo

Barnacle Foods strives to keep the ecosystems they rely on for ingredients as healthy as they found them. Ensuring that these resources continue to flourish for future generations to enjoy.  The Commence designers created a new logo that gives Barnacle Foods an organically recognizeable mark and scalable design system that reflects their company culture (and namesake).

Hello brandmark

BBQ sauce; Barnacle logo w wave

The Commence designers collaborated closely on the project with founder Lia and operator Rosa to bring forth a unified family of packaging that shows their quirky personalities and culinary creative products.

Bold packaging for unique foods

Horizontal Slider

Barnacle Foods initially came to Commence back in 2019 to design a single label for their Bullwhip Hot Sauce. The brief was to feature a salty seaman and the Bullwhip Kelp ingredients.  In addition to that, Commence pitched an illustration of a salty female character, fitting for the primarily women-lead company. The new hot sauce label and female character was a hit, and Barnacle wanted to build off this momentum!

How it began

The Commence designers created custom labels for all 16 core products; they created a flexible yet consistent design system. Each label features unique illustrations of original characters, Alaskan landscapes, and signature ingredients.  The artwork illustrated around the bottles and jars builds on the brand’s narrative and encourages customers to pick up and turn them to discover more around the bend.

Illustrated labels

Labels

Commence designers and developers worked alongside each other to build an ecommerce website that showcases the new brand identity, captures more search results, makes subscription savings clear and put the product narrative at the forefront.  Barnacle Foods now has in-depth landing pages about Kelp farming, their brand story and provides a faster shopping experience for their customers.

Optimizing the shopping experience

Rhubarb Jam rotating web

“The new brand identity is highly recognizeable and sets Barnacle Foods up to scale with sustainability, exploration, and environmental consciousness at the forefront.”

Business Cards & Boxes

Food Photos

Sauce Photos

Rebranding, illustration, packaging and web development for the sustainably-driven Barnacle Foods, bringing locally harvested ingredients to Alaska and beyond.

We'll work to conceptualize, strategize, and design a site that best tells your brand's story on the web. From a more simple one-page scroller to full ecommerce solutions and more, we'll be here from concept to launch. Not only will it work and look good - but you'll actually see a return on your investment.

Web Design

We'll work to strategize and develop a site that best tells your brand's story on the web. From a more simple one-page scroller to full eCommerce solutions and more, we'll be here from concept to launch. Not only will it work and look good - but you'll actually see a return on your investment.

Digital Design and Web Development

Today’s consumers are scary-savvy (hey, we were all thinking it). They’ve seen it all. They expect the best. And they judge your brand within a split second of interacting with it. How your brand makes them feel plays a key role in their decision to play ball. Here’s where we step up to the plate, deliver a signature look and feel that embodies your values, and create a cult-like following for that epic business of yours.

Branding

You’re one of a kind and we like that. This is where we take your brand and give it your signature look and feel across all mediums so you can start making a dent in that universe of yours.

Identity

Pixels are wonderful, but dialing in your physical packaging makes us giggle in an evil ‘stroke-our-mustache’ kinda way. We appeal to as many of their senses as possible here, from their eyes to their hands (and even their hearts).

Packaging

Design is more than just building something and walking away. It takes standing in the shoes of your user and staying there until their steps are unimpeded. It takes interface simplicity and natural interactions. We take the care it needs for the experience to be seamless and the look to be intuitive.

UI / UX

Alaska

Rebranding Alaskan kelp based foods with scalable packaging

The illustrations and messaging, created by Commence, is to highlight the unique and traditional ways olive are harvested in Italy with accute attention to detail.

Farmers to the forefront

Video

Grid

Grid 2

Charming packaging design for the Italian olive oil company producing organic and non-gmo ingredients, that illustrates traditional and quality values.

Solid illustration gives your company the bona fide originality it deserves. Having a strong quiver of illustrative elements, your company will have the tools it needs to create a bold visual mark in the world.

Illustration

Its one thing to explain an idea, its another to get the story across using visuals. We'll tell your story through a handcrafted experience not limited to illustration, typography and photography.

Graphic Design

Organic olive oil packaging with an Italian origin

Reno

Gravallese Co. products are driven by 100 years of heritage in barbering, by barbers for both themselves and those in the chairs before them.  For products created with meticulously researched natural ingredients, we built an organic brand narrative, and a visual identity that reflects attention to detail.

Building a brand based on tradition and advancement

Vinnie, the master barber, strives to do better; they’re making more sustainable & plant-based grooming products. Our packaging designs support that effort and highlight each of those key ingredients.  The product photography was inspired by stone masonry, dedication to craft, and the unity between rough and beauty.

Steps towards sustainable packaging

The charm of the Gravallese Co. flagship barber shop isn’t limited to it’s in-person location. We implemented and themed the gravallese.co website to be just as welcoming, accessible, and informative as the shop experience. Utilizing Shopify for fast checkouts and driving sales, we were able to guide their team to launch and start selling online.

The digital storefront, ecommerce

We add personality and storytelling by drawing fierce animal characters paired with raw expressions of the plant ingredients. Perhaps we're all wild animals in need of a little grooming. 

Illustration as information and inspiration

Lid illustrations

We made it clear for customers to find their desired product with bright-yet-earthy colored labels, prominantly displayed ingredients, and themed categories.

Creating product families

Gravallese Co is a brand that appeals to those with and without a beard. Barbers and non-barbers. Speaking the notion that self care and wanting to look your best is available for everyone.

Transparent Product Photos

Gravallese Co. came to us to create their brand identity, packaging design, website, and product photography centered around the refinement of traditional grooming products and self-care.

We love Shopify. Oh yes, we said it. From more than 10 successful deployments of our own development stores as well as certified Shopify Experts, we can go from design to code quickly leveraging a bit of Sass and Liquid templating. Let's talk about how we can drive sales through design, development, and some powerful Shopify storefronts.

Shopify Development

From strategy to development - Commence has extensive experience behind choosing the right eCommerce platform and what language to develop in. Down to a full understanding and respect for desktop commerce as well as mobile commerce, let's take a look at what you've got and how we can slowly take over the world together through online sales.

eCommerce Design

If wireframes are the blueprints, prototypes are the 3D walk-through where you can experience and test the interface before one line of code is written. We think a walk-through is nice before buying the house.

Prototyping

This is where we get to know you (and, more importantly, where you get to know yourself as a brand). When we’re done, we’ll have a gameplan for how to express your brand going forward.

Strategy

With over 5 years of experience in the field of typeface design and creation, we can deliver web-ready and print ready letter sets from serif to sans-serif, to condensed bold and expanded italics. Display or body copy, let’s do this.

Typeface Design

We serve a wide spectrum - from lifestyle, architectural, landscape, adventure, and product photography, keeping your images on-brand and making sure they merge consistently with both UI design as well as marketing and branding purposes.

Commercial Photography

We make sure brand that knows who it is, what it stands for, and why. Your brand positioning establishes solidarity in your organization and leaves a lasting impression in the marketplace. Some people want to work for their company in 10 years, run their company, or sell their company in 10 years, we'll lose sleep researching the best position possible to move forward.

Positioning

Nevada

Italian Heritage Brand & Grooming Products

50|50 logotype

33% details

50|50 Food Photography 

33% food photography

We knew the Zero Hospitality Group had something up their sleeves when they told us they were turning an old mechanic garage into a family-style restaurant in an upcoming neighborhood for Reno, NV. After a few branding and positioning exercises, we landed on Von Bismarck together. We were honored to be brazen with the brand across the architectural revival with historically themed typography, menu and web design, as well as food photography. 

Branding German Hospitality

Statement Hero

design and technology studio, crafting purposeful 

Commence built Blind Dog's brand identity to give homage to its original mascot, elevating it to be scalable, boldy iconic, and show "B" and "D" correlating to letters in the braille alphabet.

An old dog learning new tricks

3 Column

2 Column

Blind Dog Coffee partnered with us to develop their new brand identity and packaging system centered around community and brewed with core values instilled by founder Mark Berry.

Rebrand and packaging for a community-focused coffee roaster

50|50

Black Rabbit Mead Co. partnered with us to create a brand identity and packaging system for their mead. Although their product is produced with honey, they make a significantly less sweet mead than other traditional varieties. It was a goal of ours to carry over this idea to a less sweet, more eerie, and regal look for their brand.

Down the Rabbit Hole Packaging Design

Vast sideways logo assets all colors

We lead with an expressive word mark - reflecting just that of Vast. As a well-respected consulting group, the identity had to bring clarity, accuracy and enthusiasm to the forefront. Bright unconventional colors give balance to the more serious side to the brand, leaving a lasting impression of forward thinking.

Leveraging experience through identity

Notebooks Mockup

“The site enables customers to identify their financial challenges and receive personalized service offerings, bringing ease to qualifying leads.”

Centered Text Section

Video: Mobile Scrolling

Vast’s extensive list of services required us to create a clear way to address each client’s unique needs, while simultaneously providing the viewer with  a concise view of their values as a whole.  

The team designed and developed a site that allows new potential customers to easily learn more about Vast’s purpose, mission, values and services.

Promoting Continued Success

Landing Page (Still)

For each engagement, Vast carefully selects a team with the appropriate industry expertise to ensure their ability to provide superior services at a lower cost.   The desire to clarify these areas of work lead our team to developing an improved stystem - three distinct paths to directly market to an array of different needs: Start, Fix and Grow.

Laying the Paths

Video: Start, Fix & Grow Interactions

Expressive identity system, interactive web design and development for Vast - a consulting group offering financial expertise and virtual accounting services to small businesses, primarily in the food industry space.

Identity, Web Design & Development

Images 1-7

We like a good whiskey. Especially when it’s smoked and made of the finest quality ingredients just down the way from our Reno studio. We revived the Forsaken River brand with a new visual identity and family of packaging, including wood veneer engraved labels.

Rye Patch Whiskey Wooden Label

Image 1

Growing in the high desert of Northern Nevada is difficult, but Future Fresh laughed in the face of mono-croppers everywhere and is now bringing fresh produce to the desert. It was only fitting that we made their brand identity represent innovation, all while keeping it light and simple.

Keep it simple

The Fresh Future logo was designed to represent the convenience and quality of aquaponic farming-- shaping the future of modern agriculture with sustainable, local produce for the community.

Logo Design 

Image 4

The Fresh Future color palette was created with inspiration from different crops. Contrasting colors on the warm & cool spectrum leave a lasting feeling of organic novelty.

Natural + Fresh 

We wanted to fully embody what it means to be natural. So we kept it sweet and simple

Images 8-10

To keep your future fresh, your delivery could be no more than a tap away.

Image 11

Through re-imagining organic produce in a box, we started creating an enticing and environmentally progressive identity for the Fresh Future Box; the aquaponics solution to the end of the Farmer's Market season. Whether it’s spicy peppers, rich butter greens, or plum tomatoes, we made sure we incorporated all elements of sweet sweet sustainability. Ensuring that they sacrificed nothing when it came to authentically representing their brand promise, we created their brand so it was replete with natural elements and vibrant visuals.

The Future of Community Supported Agriculture

The DVA color palette was created to reflect the central focus of water in their sustainable farming practice

Aquaponics Through Color 

Images 3,4

The Dayton Valley Aquaponics logo was designed to represent the harmony between technology and tradition, and promoting locally grown, ecologically sustainable food.

Harmony in Design 

Image 6

With eye-catching transitions and photos of their produce and facility, it invites users to learn more about DVA, sustainability, and what it means to grow fresh produce year round.

Eye Catching

The animations and movement on this site are something you'll want to experience for yourself.

See For Yourself

Images 9-19

Dayton Valley Aquaponics partnered with us to create a brand that represented their bio-fueled take on farming that provides fresh produce year round in the High Desert of Nevada

Rethinking Produce through Aquaponics

Images 1,2

We refreshed the look of Coffeebar to match their attitude. Bold, bright, yet sophisticated and refined. With such a growth taking place in the company, and a dedicated, loving fanbase - it was of upmost importance that we complete every action with strategy. Our measure twice, cut once mentality was something we were taking into account every step of the process.

Identity Exploration 

Image 3

In addition to Coffeebar’s signature orange, brown and tan color scheme, we introduced some pronounced secondary colors because coffee offers the ideology of comfort and energy of movement all at once.

Step One

Badges are great for everything from identity extension, to website ornamentation, to clothing designs or patches.

More than text and color 

Image 7

While we wanted to keep things modern, we also didn’t want to erase the human element. That human element is what differentiates all of Coffeebar’s locations from so many other coffee shops. We thought some handwritten elements would carry that ideology accross their brand.

Handwritten <3

Images 8,9

One of the goals we established when we first met with our pals at Coffeebar was the desire to have a kickass website. We wanted something that highlighted all locations, encompassed everything a customer could look for, stand out above the ordinary and, of course, look amazing.

This is the first page Coffeebar’s customers see. It not only gives them a taste of the custom video components, eye-catching transitions and integrated handwritten elements, but it also highlights the shopping experience and invites them to check out Coffeebar’s individual locations, blog, ideology, spotify favorites and lifestyle portfolio.

Homepage of champions. 

This site starts with the expected. You’ll find the contact, about, culture and shop pages quickly. Then it adds some pizazz. It includes pages dedicated to the senses— photos to look at, playlists to listen to, news to read about and menus to salviate over. As if that wasn’t cool enough, each of Coffeebar’s location pages link to these experiences, displaying corresponding examples of each. Lastly the site finishes off with some truly special surprises, roadtrips and brew guides, but you’ll see those later.

Where can we visit?

Coffeebar has done a fantastic job of keeping their brand consistent throughout each of their locations while making each space uniquely fit into the local area. Our challenge was to do the same thing digitally.

Keeping it all together 

We chose Shopify as the platform of choice. It has a beautiful back-end that gives us the ability to hand-craft the shopping experience, and staff the ease of use. (Added bonus for their top-notch analytics, data reporting and ecommerce insights. )

The shopping experience is well organized into three categories and kicks things off with a couple different suggestions. Each product page includes pictures, its story and a sticky header that displays the most important details 100% of the time as you scroll to explore a product. Which means, yes, customers can add that baby to cart no matter where they are on the page.

Bring in the money 

Its always sweet to see artwork on items people bring with them (or wear on them), because that means theres’s a higher chance that art will touch more souls. Here’s a couple products we merged with our badges and typography as proposals to add to Coffeebar’s online store.

It ends with swag

Image 14

What’s a coffeeshop without rad music? We embedded Coffeebar’s favorite playlists with each location page, suggesting a set of songs that will always bring you back to your favorite coffee artists.

Feed all the senses 

Images 16-19

Ever wonder how you’re favorite coffee spot makes their drinks so perfect? Well here’s how. Visit Coffeebar’s brew guides page to explore four in depth brewing methods. And if you’re already a master brewer, at least check it out out to admire the awesome handwritten elements.

We've hit the jackpot 

Image 21

As if detailed steps and a complete instruction list weren’t enough, the illustrations that pair with each step blew it out of the water.

Illustrations for the soul 

Image 23

Image 24, 25

When you first visit Coffeebar Roadtrips you’ll see a map with a bunch of stops Coffeebar employees handpicked. Each stop’s point is color coded brown, blue, yellow or green which corresponds to the stop type: discover, explore, drink or eat. Filter by location, or type, or both. Zoom in or out, and scroll right or left. You can even click on each point to see a preview of the stop, its name and city.

The bells and whistles

There’s even a corresponding card that scrolls to display whenever you click on a point. It offers you all the details you need to know, its website, a link to google maps, which employee suggested it and why.

Know it all 

Image 28

There was a lot of fun with photo and video on this project. We were able to work with on-location and studio photography as well as cinemagraphs, custom video and timelapses.

Great for website and blog photos, we shot everything Coffeebar where all the magic really happens.

In their environment 

Great for social media, we shot some messy, but worth it, looping cinemagraphs and in-studio scenes. The cleanliness of the solid color backgrounds and attention-grabbing hand placement allowed us to create a whole new feel and interest.

Bringing it back home 

Each coffeebar location got its own video. Some are captivating timelapses while others show just how cool the shop and their employees really are.

The reel deal

Being a group of creative professionals, its only natural to be fueled by caffeine and cold brews. Coffeebar is a supplier of just that— not to mention wine, baked treats, good times and great memories with even greater friends. At the start of Summer 2017 when Coffeebar was gearing up to open their 5th location we began a partnership to achieve an enhanced social presence and build a brand new website in preparation for the much-anticipated arrival in Silicon Valley.

Un Vero Gusto Italiano

Full Width Images 1-2 Grid

The RetroRocket Coffee logo was created to express the nostalgia and excitement of mid-century space travel that inspires the RetroRocket team to roast delicous coffee. Reminding us to launch our day with gust and coffee, as well as coming back down to Earth to enjoy more, you guessed it... coffee!

It's All In The Logo 

The RetroRocket Coffee color palette was created with inspiration from parts of the Tarantula Nebula and mid-century design. Contrasting colors on the warm and cool spectrum leave a lasting feeling of wonder and nostalgia.

Let Your Mind Wonder

Full Width Image 6

We carried our space theme across every unique coffee label. From future themed lamps to UFOs themselves, these labels have it all. Paired with the pro tips, snazzy hints and intriguing company summary on the coffee bags, this packaging soars above the rest.

Packaging for the Gods

Full Width Images 8-10 Grid

RetroRocket Coffee is a purely web based coffee brand that has it all. Starting from step one, we created the color palette, brand, packaging and website for this intuitive company. Packed full of space exploration references, sweeping design and unique web experiences, you'll want to know every detail of the rise of RetroRocket.

We are a creative agency that's about forward movement

Rebranding Alaskan kelp based foods with scalable packaging

Organic olive oil packaging with an Italian origin

Italian Heritage Brand & Grooming Products

Branding German Hospitality

Commence is a strategic design and technology studio, crafting purposeful brands, products, and experiences that turn cultural values into company value.

Blind Dog Coffee

Gravallese Co.

Barnacle Foods

Black Rabbit Mead Company

Von Bismarck

Vast

Forsaken River Distilling

Fresh Future

Olivaio

Dayton Valley Aquaponics

Coffeebar

Retro Rocket Coffee

Commence Studio Wins AAF Reno's Best of Show

How to Get the Best ROI From Your Email Marketing Campaign

What is a Brand Archetype?

Commence Studio Named a Member of the Clutch Top 100

Facing Your Fears of Rebranding