More than mountains
Colorado Tourism partnered with Blue Apron and Atlas Obscura to bring the burgeoning Colorado food scene to new audiences–and their kitchens.
My job was to design a printed card that would be inserted into current customers’ subscription boxes alongside the usual recipe cards. These cards would announce the Blue Apron collaboration with Colorado chef Brother Luck, who had created a new recipe highlighting Coloradan ingredients. The goal was to connect the adventurous spirit Colorado is known for with its exciting new food scene.
And, of course, to sell those subscription boxes.
Get a glimpse of my design process below.
Creative Director Rachel Abady, Atlas Obscura
Graphic Designer Anne Meadows, Atlas Obscura
Client Mira Bogart, Manager, Account Supervisor at MMGY Global
01 RESEARCH
What visuals, other than mountains, convey the concept of “Colorado”?
When I began work on this project, the creative direction for the campaign hadn’t yet been finalized. We didn’t have the final dish from Chef Brother Luck yet, or a cleared photo of him to use. Not one to be fazed by ambiguity, I pulled placeholder images from the chef’s restaurant website to supplement stock images of ingredients and foods common to Coloradan cuisine. I combined these with quotes he had given in the past, and some generic copy to help me begin to determine the flow the card’s information.
I was delighted to learn Colorado had its own peach varietal, and was also known for green chilis. There’s a wine-growing region that many people (me!) don’t know about either. I pulled these inspirations together and got to work visualizing how we might communicate the vibe of Colorado through the lens of cuisine.
02 IDEATE
Some early ideas were easy to reject.
Wow. Yikes. No.
Clever, but boring.
Looks ok, but like, they DO literally sell meals?
03 ITERATE
The first round of design drafts we shared with the client leaned heavily on Chef Brother Luck and his approach to Coloradan cuisine. Based on client feedback, we refined the creative approach to more directly reference the landscape Colorado is known for, making the chef a secondary focus.
Later, we fully moved away from the focus on Chef Brother Luck, and settled on the headline pair “Adventure by Fork” on the front of the card, and “Adventure by Foot” for the back.
I wanted to create negative space for the copy to live by creating solid shapes that echoed the form of mountains. We tried a few iterations of this idea, but in the end, the client preferred a cleaner look.
FIRST DRAFTS
SECOND DRAFTS
THIRD DRAFTS
"This collaboration not only highlights the exceptional talent of Colorado chefs like Brother Luck, but it also showcases the rich diversity of ingredients and cultural influences that make the state's food scene truly unique,” Timothy Wolfe, Director of the Colorado Tourism Office shared.
