A hand-drawn brand that holds its own across a crowded farmers market. I met Markus tree planting in BC years ago, between geology contracts, throwing pots in whatever hours were left over. Sockeye Ceramics is the brand that made the pottery the main thing.
We sketched it out over a campfire, both of us drawing, arguing and redrawing. He wanted bold and different, built on the sockeye salmon from the area he grew up in, with a cheeky little sock over the tail so nobody could mistake it for anyone else's fish. That night produced the concept the final mark came from.
I took it back to Manitoba and we went back and forth from there. This one let me use my illustration properly, because the brand needed to look like what he makes: handmade, a little quirky, genuinely fun. Nothing about it should look like it came out of a template.
The bright colours echo the glazes he uses, and they do a practical job too. A farmers market is a wall of logos, and you have about a second to catch someone walking past. This one resonates and it holds its own in that crowd. Once you've seen Sockeye Ceramics, it's hard to forget.
With the mark and the palette set, we paired it with clean, legible type so the whole thing holds together wherever it lands. Then we built his posting strategy: what to show, how to show it, and how to get the work in front of more people. Watching Markus grow his studio over the years has been the best part.