The challenge on this one? Brand an event in 1 week.

Working in the nonprofit industry and designing for events can mean plans change QUICK. I was tasked with creating an identity for our Second Sunday Brunch Market one week before the deadline to get material printed. Thankfully, with the program lead and my manager, we were able to nail down a creative direction within an hour. We wanted the event to have an artisan, happy, uniquely Old Sacramento feel.

Because of the time crunch, I initially looked to sites like Creative Market and iStock to find a hand-drawn market storefront for the logo. But, nothing I found genuinely displayed the architecture of America’s most important Gold Rush town (was that biased?). I realized it was going to take more time to keep searching for something I was never going to find than it would take to draw the dang thing myself. And, being uniquely Old Sacramento was a part of the creative direction that I was not willing to sacrifice.

My final design resembles my initial sketch more than I’m used to. That made creating this brand a more vulnerable experience than I was expecting, even though having the imperfect, hand-drawn look conveys the feel of an artisan market in Old Sacramento fantastically. The time crunch came in handy here—I didn’t have time to be self conscious about illustrating, I just had to get it done.