Zack Darling Creative Associates » branding

Plant It Water

Zack — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 20:57:29 +0000

When one of your product designs reaches the market as a popular item one store shelves, it feels good. We’re happy to announce that Plant It Water has officially launched and will be being carried in a number of stores and supermarkets soon. They will be in all Whole Foods Markets and in other stores around the West Coast.

Plant It Water is a fantastic purified water that offers an conscious alternative to plastic water bottles that are cramming up our landfills. These recyclable paper bottles are made from recycled materials. Furthermore with each bottle purchased a tree is planted in deforested areas with via Trees For The Future. As if that weren’t enough, when you buy a bottle they also make a donation to A Single Drop which helps impoverished people around the world have access to clean drinking water. It’s great to see new businesses taking a conscious role in helping our struggling planet and people.

We worked with them for many months to design a packaging that would be inviting and appealing when sitting on the busy shelves of the supermarket beverage aisle.

Rocknsocks.com: Retail & Wholesale Online Catalog

Zack Darling — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 21:32:30 +0000

We’re happy to announce that we’ve recently launched a new full-service e-commerce website for our friends at RockNSocks. When they initially came to ZDCA, they wanted a full visual and functionality upgrade to their existing site. We brought their online sales and inventory management systems from a ZenCart application to Magento, and re-built their shipping and accounting process from the ground up. Creatively we built upon the funky fun theme started by their previous designer and added another level of dimension, form and interactivity. We chose to break free of the typical e-commerce shopping site template style and re-created the site architecture by bringing the shopping cart, search, wishlist, account and other useful shopping tools into the top nav bar. This allows a convenient way for the visitors to see what’s in the cart at any time without stepping on the design or carrying you to another page.

This is a good example of our fully customized database-driven e-commerce website products. If you’re looking to take your products online and dazzle your customers with a beautiful shopping experience, let’sget started!

The winter time is coming! What better time of year to treat yourself to some “Eco-Fabulous” environmentally friendly regenerated cotton blend socks! Please drop by and shop around!

Check out the site at: www.rocknsocks.com

Christy’s On The Square

Zack Darling — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 23:54:05 +0000

When restaurant entrepreneurs Amos Flint & Justin Pidgeon decided to renovate and re-launch one of the nicest spots in downtown Santa Rosa, they came to ZDCA for their new look. We worked with them to develop the Christy’s On The Square brand identity, original illustration (drawn by SR’s tattoo guru, Joe Leonard), custom leather-bound menus with embossed brass emblems and an iconic backlit sign above the entry.

The idea behind the project was to return this historic downtown location to it’s elegant past as The Topaz Room – a sophisticated and fashionable bar & restaurant started in 1945. We worked to give a respectful nod to the turn of the century woman, Christy. Christy embodied all that was beautiful in the early 1900′s, similar to the iconic American Gibson Girl. The result was an image and brand that matched the graceful and dignified women of the times.

Visit the site at www.christysonthesquare.com

We are happy to report that since their opening, Christy’s On The Square has become one of the most popular spots in all of Santa Rosa. If you plan on visiting on a weekend night, be sure to come early as they usually reach capacity quickly.

We built the website using WordPress so the client can continually change their own menu, upload pictures, add blog postings and easily edit the site as needed.

HydroPacific’s New Look

Zack Darling — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:18:29 +0000

One of our favorite new clients is HydroPacific – a gardening supply store in Ukiah and Cloverdale. They’ve been wonderful people to work with and I’m really enjoying the project. We’re currently working on a mid-sized online store with over 2,000 products. We’re photographing every one and building the e-commerce system for them now. The design is looking good and I look forward to sharing it with you all when it’s done. Very exciting.

For now, I can share with you some other design work we just completed. HydroPacific has had strong branding from the first opening of their store, but the time has come to help them take it to the next level. Here are a number of examples of some new designs I just completed for them.

The Penofin Rebranding Process

Zack Darling — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 05:49:45 +0000

I completed these designs a while back, but wanted to share a process I enjoy where I polish up and give a facelift to an already existing logo. I’ve been working with Penofin since mid 1997 and would have to say they’re my oldest corporate client. Great company, great product, great people to work with.

Here is what their logo looked like for many years:

This is what the final logo looked like after the re-branding process:

Nothing like some effects and polishing to bring out the beauty of an already-effective brand!