Every once in a while we stop to pay attention to situations around us that demand action. You do it. Everyone does it. Whether it’s stopping your work day and taking your kids to a waterpark or buying food for a friend, the time was now and you did because it crossed your mind. I’m BLESSED to work with such guys that sometimes allow for those situations in our budget.

This past May when we were prepping for Banjo-B-Que, an awesome guy named David was on site at the workshop and runs a car detail shop outside. He gave us a hand at times when the job was paid and at times when it wasn’t a paid gig, out of the kindness of his heart.

I talked to him the other day and asked him how business was,  he said “a little slow”, but he’s confident that it will come. This was his advertising.

A sign this size couldn’t be seen from Greene Street. No way. Though I did appreciate the color contrast, it couldn’t properly do the job. We went back to the the office and talked about what would make it more effective.

1.) Maybe strapping the sign to an elephant and teach it to spray cars as they passed? (food = increase in overhead – so no)

2.) Train a team of monkeys to throw poo at the cars at the stoplight. (Give someone a reason to get the car washed – thus creating demand, but keeping the monkeys may be more overhead than the elephant – so no)

3.) Design and build a sign that you can see from 11th and Greene that will last in the weather and reenergize David’s efforts to “do right” and clean some cars.

We went with 3, and the sign is below. If you like it, stop by Anointed Hands Carwash and let David bring your car back to life. If you can do that that, and upon your request, we’ll give you a free installation of wordpress on any server that you’d like. So go down there, get your car washed and compliment the man on his new sign.

It’s the 90 mile-an-hour curve ball or the white squall on a sunny day. None of us saw it coming. We’ve done branding for everything from builders to hospitals, but not one of us had done a real sports team identity.

With occasions like this, there’s an edge of terror for a split second that tells you to shutter in fear or go for the goal. Of course, we went for it. It being the branding for Augusta’s new hockey team the River Hawks. Concept was a retro style embroidered River Hawk that wasn’t supposed to be a cartoon bird and in NO WAY have little skinny legs. This crushed my concept out of the gate, my vision for the River Hawk looked like an tennis ball with toothpicks boasting a wad of feathers that would rival any other bird in the park.

One member of the team took it upon herself (hint hint) to just scrap the design by screen method and hit the paper.  She hand drew the typeface and detailed the concept into form. The team submitted other designs as well, but quickly dove into progressing this concept to the final brand. The result was exactly what the hockey guys were dreaming for and it was loads of fun for us to be a part of.  (Except for me permanently scuffing the floor with a hockey stick).

Three different branding variations were produced for the use of the Augusta River Hawks.

The unveiling event was held at Somewhere in Augusta, with a great turn out and plenty of press.  It was an honor for Kruhu to play such a role in helping Augusta’s new hockey team skate into the hearts of the locals.

The object was to draw something kinda twisting old kegs into a modern and festive mobile bar system. The first sketch was as is below. The original idea was to cover the front lip with bottle caps. We realized after we drilled the centers out of 2000 of them that it would seriously busy up the overall look, instead, we’ll invest time into the curved wood grain effect. To get this effect it was pointless to try to use real wood due to the density and weight – so – we went with foam.

From there I hunted for some inspiration.  The largest bottle cap that I could find was nailed to the side of a cracker barrel.  See below

Then it began.  We carved and coated the foams and started making the bottle caps.  We decided to go with steel for a bar top and base.  Then we tossed it together to see what it may look like as a concept.  I wasn’t against shifting the idea on the fly to make a better project.

So here we are.  We had bondo’d the tops of the caps and sanded most of them in the process to apply a nice vinyl sticker to the final tops. Then I popped the crazy question to the Kru…..”What can we do to take these over the edge?”  The idea sprung up to machine out the “B” and backlight it. This meant getting acrylic, line sanding it and gluing cut out pieces to it.  We also started cutting the centers out of the bottle caps, prepping the tops/bases and painting the foam to look like wood.  We also applied a wood banding to look like steel and match the rusted bar tops.

It was a large amount of work.  The final product is display below, take note of the lighting the lights run under the lip and behind the “B”.  We also built a carrier for the bars they weigh around 400lbs each.

I want to thank absolutely everyone who had a part in helping to put these together.  They’ve truly exceeded our own expectations.