Crafted™

ProjectFocus

DesignArchitecture

Crafted™

/ Overview

Crafted™ — A platform for communal exchange within today's creative scene.

Digital Strategy
Visual Language
Content Strategy
Style Guide

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Challenge

Diversity breeds the greatest collaborations, and nowhere is this more evident than in the city of San Diego. Boasting a rich and diverse creative scene, each of its subcultures has excelled at building themselves up, from dancers to designers to artists. All these people coexist in one place yet never cross paths. The city needed a way to transcend the divides and unite everyone.

Approach

As an agency, we’re big believers in cultural exchange and pride ourselves on building experiences that provoke dialogue while bringing people together. We asked ourselves what might happen if these groups sat side-by-side and were given a space to have transparent and real conversations despite their differences. It was out of this tension that Crafted was born, both as a brand and as a movement to rally the community.

Accolades/Press

Communication Arts — Interactive Annual Winner — 2019
Awwwards — Site of the Day — 2019
The FWA — Site of the Day — 2019
CSS Design Awards — Website of the Day — 2019

BASIC/DEPT®

/ Branding

Developing an Identity

Our community undertaking called for a brand that invites people to be a part of the experience and evokes nostalgia, intimacy, and connection.

Identity

An identity that reflects the diversity of the creative community.

Because culture is made by many, it was imperative for us to create an identity that reflects both the diverse community and its individual creator. It began with the bare essentials, starting with the vintage-inspired logo and typefaces.

Additionally, light beige was our color of choice with black as a secondary color to punctuate the warmth and timelessness of the brand. To complement this identity, we created a visual representation of San Diego’s diverse creative talent with a set of hand-drawn characters, which we update regularly to depict the growth of our community.

BASIC/DEPT®

/ Digital Strategy

Establishing Digital Touchpoints

A brand that is about bringing people together needs a digital strategy to unite the community by bridging the gap between online and physical experiences.

Website

An interactive archive of conversations.

ExperienceCrafted.com is an homage to the real people who make up our vibrant community, using their words and anecdotes as a foundation for our content and sprinkling in subtle interactions along the way to make the experience feel as tangible as possible.

User Experience

Highlighting stories that promote the broader conversation.

Each page is dedicated to a different facet of the Crafted experience. Interviews explore the captivating careers and personal lives of up-and-coming creators and tastemakers, and the Past Experiences page gives visitors an intimate glimpse at the conversations happening both at and away from the table.

Social Media

Giving the community a platform on Instagram.

Our social media efforts are dedicated to shedding light on the local cultural scene through inspiration and information. In addition to recapping the different Crafted experiences and events, our Instagram feed acts as a platform for San Diego creatives, publicizing relevant places and happenings within the community as well as those who define it. It acts as a voice for the brand, bringing everyone closer to what goes on at the table, on the stage, and in the city.

BASIC/DEPT®

/ Experiential Strategy

Bringing People Together

The Crafted mission is to impact culture through collision. To uphold this pursuit, we unite people from different backgrounds and encourage honest conversations.

Event Coordination

From dinner series to community gathering.

Each month, we use dinner as a means for interaction by curating special pop-up experiences centered around key themes, which help shape the courses as well as the conversations. However, our vision for Crafted broadened with each experience, as we wanted to find a way to share the stories and perspectives of guests past the dinner table.

This ambition gave rise to two additional initiatives within the Crafted family. The Artist Showcase is an inclusive, biannual gallery aimed at spotlighting disparate and lesser known art forms introduced at the dinners, while the table’s conversations are amplified at our annual Cultural Conversation panel series.