Fox and the Machine
Overview
The tattoo industry is a highly competitive market. It can be infuriating for artists to break away from the already established shops and pursue their own dreams. Chris Campbell, a ridiculously talented artist in Calgary and his apprentice Dean Messervey were ready to take the leap of faith and open the doors on their own parlour. To help them off to the races they approached Dose to get an injection of kick-ass in their branding.
The Analysis
Believe it or not it’s difficult to find great branding on the doorstep of tattoo parlours. Their contemporaries have branding that looks more often than not as though they did it themselves–
- Go to dafont.com and type in tattoo font.
- Draw coyfish on looseleaf
- Scan coyfish.
- Merge gawdawful font with scanned pencil drawing.
- Smack logo on everything.
We knew right away we’d be able to get them on the right track. The name in itself “Fox And The Machine” gave us a ton of legs to work with.
Legend has it when they were plotting this venture in Dean’s living room, they were at a stalemate in name searching. And peering in the window at that moment was a red fox, staring right at them. The “Machine” was a nod to the tattoo equipment.
The Cure
From the get-go this was predominantly a glorified design job. No major strategy or problem solving had to happen. We were able to dive into moodboards right away. We put together 3 drastically different boards for them to pick from based on angles we thought made sense.
They landed on a gritty, handmade aesthetic that felt very native to the industry. It was the safest option but gave us a fun sandbox to play around in. We armed them with a toolkit of logos and textures they were able to use throughout all of their collateral, physical space and social channels. Each of the options serves a purpose in a different space allowing easy application to the task at hand.
If you’re in the Calgary area, head on down to their shop and get some ink. Tell them Dose Media sent ya and you heard they do the best “Infiniti symbols in town”.
Project Numbers
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17Freakouts over how good the name is.
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4Tattoos from them on Matt's body.
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0Other tattoo shops this cool.
I remember Dean drawing wieners in grade 6 class and now he’s making a living drawing on peoples skin. We’re proud of ya boys – go get em!
DOSE Media
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