Noise 13

A Fork Full of Earth is an organic catering company based in Marin County, California. Since 2015, they have crafted fresh, seasonal menus for important milestones and casual gatherings alike, partnering closely with local farms and artisans. They asked Noise 13 to refresh their logo and website, to reflect the high-end quality of their services.

Our first task was to update Fork Full’s logo. We simplified the forms and applied a new, rich color palette, retaining the strengths of the original logo and maintaining brand awareness. The result was a dignified, quiet mark that honored the legacy of the company.

For the website, we designed a clean, classic layout that is simple and intuitive to navigate. Large hero images allow gorgeous food photography to shine, and subtle animations add elevated softness to the website experience. A rich palette of greens, blues and golds grounds the typography and complements the clear wayfinding. We even created a set of custom watercolor illustrations, adding an organic, expressive detail to make the website come alive.

The result is a fresh, welcoming web and mobile experience that celebrates coastal California cuisine and the Fork Full legacy. We can’t wait to see what they’ll serve up next.

Mobiliti is a vehicle subscription service that offers drivers choices and flexibility. Not ready to purchase or lease? No problem. You can pay one monthly fee and drive until you’re ready to decide.

The creative entrepreneurs who founded Mobiliti recognized the traditional model for getting a vehicle was broken, and they came up with a community-centric solution that might just revitalize the auto industry.

Mobiliti has two distinct audiences with needs that can seem almost at odds: a growing population of millennial drivers not ready to commit to long-term vehicle ownership, and car dealer partners who seek to bring in new customers and make sales. For the latter, we needed to address their concern that subscriptions might cannibalize leasing and purchasing sales. Our key insight was to position subscriptions as a “step along the journey” to ownership, which can help bring a wider set of potential customers into dealerships.

Introducing a Visionary Connector

This positioning helped us envision how Mobiliti will build relationships with dealers, with customers, and between dealers and customers, and we identified Mobiliti’s brand personality as a “visionary connector.” We incorporated the theme of Mobiliti’s being at the center of these connections through identity, messaging, voice, and brand expression.

We chose Futura as the font for its bold personality, one that is charismatic and commands attention. Geometric patterns are incorporated in the logo and design elements to provide texture and detail, to give a sense of movement. The overall look and feel of the brand is both elevated and inviting, helping dealers and drivers feel like they are participating in something truly special.

The logo was inspired by Mobiliti’s business model of being flexible, responsive, creative, fluid, and swift. It represents “Endless Possibilities!” for car ownership.

Sysdig, an open source company that provides monitoring and security for data containers, has rapidly evolved from a startup to an established company with a growing suite of enterprise products. With this expansion, they needed an updated brand, a user-friendly website, and a means to effectively communicate highly technical information to B2B clients—from developers and engineers to top-level managers and executives.

Sysdig team sought out Noise 13 for our lifestyle expertise. They also appreciated our experience in UX and digital strategy, which enabled us to smoothly collaborate with their development team.

Our objective was to build a brand that’s brainy, but relatable; one that’s polished, but not slick. We focused on the idea that Sysdig’s technology is “at the heart” of both container intelligence and core business challenges such as agility, which brings out their passion and their unique technology.

With a strategy in place, we moved on to building a consistent and effective visual system, including iconography, a full library of patterns, and an illustration library. To ensure their brand colors would not be confused with their product alert colors, we designated a limited, but ownable and expandable, color palette. To create distinctive identifiers for marketing their products, we also developed a system of what we call “iconistrations”—symbols that are more complex than icons and simpler than fully rendered illustrations.

All these elements came together for a modern-looking website that incorporates a complex but user-friendly navigation system and a high degree of interactivity. From a broad base of clients including Pixar, Comcast, and Cisco, Sysdig will continue to grow and bring new products to market, so we knew it was important to establish guidelines that will help them update their site and brand in cohesive ways. Ultimately, we delivered a brand identity that is in line with who Sysdig is as a company—and who they want to become.

Instacart is a North American leader in online grocery and one of the fastest-growing companies in e-commerce. Instacart's same-day delivery and pickup services bring fresh groceries and everyday essentials to busy people and families across the U.S. and Canada in as fast as an hour. Instacart has partnered with more than 300 beloved national, regional and local retailers to deliver from nearly 25,000 stores across more than 5,500 cities in North America. Their employer brand team came to us to help them build a new careers website that tells the story of how and why Instacart is one of the best places to work, and that would support them in their efforts to hire the best talent as they continue to grow.

From a design standpoint, we addressed this project in a couple of ways. First, we immersed ourselves in the recently refreshed employer brand that Instacart’s team created. Full of friendly colors and playful, geometric illustrations, this new look expressed the “neighborly” part of their personality. Secondly, as food is a huge part of the Instacart brand, we took every opportunity to playfully integrate it throughout the site. Food puns also make an appearance in copy throughout the site. “Craving a new job?" is the headline above the listings on each team page.

Another focus of the project was ensuring that the resulting website could be easily maintained as Instacart’s hiring goals shift and grow. To tackle this challenge we teamed up with White Rabbit Group to develop a customized Wordpress content management system that’s both intuitive and secure. In addition, we seamlessly integrated the new careers site with the greenhouse.io job board API, so that any new job postings would automatically populate as part of the new website. 

Creativity Explored is an art studio that holds a special place in our hearts. For years we’ve been visiting their space in the heart of the SF Mission neighborhood for inspiration, joy and great art for our own walls and gifts. When they asked us to evolve their brand identity in preparation for a website update, we were thrilled to have the opportunity.

With over 30 years of cultivating a collective that places the work, needs, culture, and experience of artists with developmental disabilities at the center of the community, Creativity Explored’s existing identity felt a bit too young and unpolished. Also, for a group championing access, the brand colors wouldn’t have met web accessibility guidelines. Our goal was to maintain brand recognition, while ensuring the new identity was fully accessible and reflected that the artists at Creativity Explored are adults.

The result was a clean, type based logo that maintained the spirit of the original mark and added a touch of modern. To balance this with the true vibrant spirit of the community we introduced a palette of bright colors to support the identity. We normally name brand colors to work with the story of a company but we asked the The Creativity Explored team to work with the artists to describe and name each of the colors and the outcome was better than we could have imagined. 

Fremont Bank is a local community bank in the San Francisco Bay Area, with branches from Walnut Creek to Oakland to Mountain View. Their focus on personal relationships with clients and strong history of community service have made the bank a highly respected business for nearly 60 years. They asked Noise 13 to revitalize their brand, with one caveat: we couldn’t touch the logo that has served them since 1964.

To begin, we built a comprehensive brand toolkit for Fremont Bank to use. We updated the bank’s brand colors of gold and teal, and built a secondary palette inspired by Bay Area landmarks, that can be used to help differentiate between the bank’s different product offerings. For typefaces, we introduced a bold serif for eye-catching headlines, and a clean sans serif for clarity and readability

We knew we wanted to emphasize the human touches of banking with Fremont Bank, too. We created a library of playful illustrations and icons, and a warm, candid photography style, focusing on the many communities of people who make up the Bay Area. We designed a set of patterns, deconstructing the Fremont Bank logo to express the themes of Community, Bank, Borrow and Invest, as well as a series of topographic textures celebrating where Fremont Bank’s locations can be found. Lastly, we developed an elegant marketing template that uses a colorful frame and dog-eared page to capture viewers’ attention across all applications.

With all these new elements, Fremont Bank now has a cohesive look that will serve it for years to come. We’re proud to be a member of their community.

Food technology company New Age Meats came to Noise 13 for help establishing their brand in the exciting field of cultivated meat. They’re growing meat from the genetic information of unharmed animals, bypassing the need for the significant amount of natural resources currently invested in raising livestock. Still in the early stages of development and FDA approval, New Age Meats was looking to create a brand to attract investors as well as potential employees and culinary partners. We worked closely with their team to create key brand messaging and an identity that is approachable, thoughtful and inspiring; coming to life in a simple website while they continue to develop their products. We’re particularly in love with the abstract graphics representing DNA, and the “A” in FAQ that we transformed into a pig that give a friendly touch to the site.

Wine Country Botanicals came to Noise 13 to give the brand a makeover before its debut on national television program QVC this fall. We worked collaboratively to bring the core of the Wine Country Botanicals brand to life with their messaging, packaging, website, and photography. 

Our goal was to increase readability and consistency, enliven photography with wine country life, and polish the packaging experience and website to convey the feeling of relaxing in wine country. It was all in the details, from adding in a system of icons for the main scent notes in each blend, updating the font and information hierarchy on the labels, and adding much more detail and photography to the new website. 

Full project https://noise13.com/case-study/wine-country-botanicals/

The historied landscape architecture firm RHAA has a legacy of designing memorable spaces tailored to the human experience. RHAA approached Noise 13 to revamp their brand identity and develop a collateral system that would reflect the care and passion that comes through in their work. Success was achieved by creating a flexible toolkit that would allow RHAA to tell stories as big and impactful as their projects. 

Structural custom typography stands out from the competitive set. The features of the wordmark were thoughtfully selected to reflect visual details that exist in the landscape architecture practice. Triangular cuts in the shoulders of the letterforms are suggestive of structures that appear on architectural plans. We expanded on this concept by using a diagonal rule, reminiscent of the division of space and pathways placed within the landscape. 

Full project: https://noise13.com/case-study/rhaa/

None of us expected the impact COVID-19 has had on our lives. We have so much to be grateful for, and too much to mourn. A bright spot throughout this turbulent time has been the incredible team working on the front lines at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, providing high quality care for every member of our community. When the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation team asked us to create a campaign to encourage our city to show their gratitude, we jumped at the opportunity.

It Takes Heart came to life as a conversation between the community and ZSFG, both as a show of thanks to the hospital workers on the front lines, as well as a recognition of sacrifices that we have had to make to slow the spread. It started with a call to “show your heart” in creative ways, and to write notes of gratitude to the hospital workers at ZSFG. After an outpouring of support manifesting as homemade hearts posted in windows and on doors, chalked on sidewalks, and murals on boarded up storefronts, the campaign culminated in a 200 foot long fence outside of the staff entrance to ZSFG. The fence displayed notes of gratitude and photos that we received from the community.

Full project here https://noise13.com/case-study/sfghf/

OM has been a legal cannabis company in the Bay Area since 2008. With a long history of harnessing the natural restorative power of plant medicine, they have garnered a cult following over the years, but their visual system didn’t stand up to the quality of their product.

We worked with OM to better communicate their legacy and expertise in creating luxurious infused topicals, edibles and elixirs. With that foundation, we then looked at the packaging system across dozens of products and over different 40 SKUs. The new system hierarchy works seamlessly across a variety of form factors and adds a touch of luxury to the brand, both in design and consistency. It also acts as a foundation for additional products to be added far into the future.

To balance the complexity of the Sri Yantra, and aid in readability, we kept the rest of the packaging system design minimal and clean. We removed the crown from the logomark in a technical effort to make the brand more legible at small sizes, and to maximize the amount of space it could take up without skewing the information hierarchy of the packaging. In addition, we slightly increased the vibrancy of the color palette to reflect the energy and passion that OM puts into its products. 

Full project here https://noise13.com/case-study/om-edibles/

For the visual expression of “Go Beyond,” we were interested in exploring something with depth and multiple surfaces. We wanted the ability to present typography in a nonlinear and dimensional way. After some experimentation, we landed on a collection of folded paper sculptures that would allow the viewer to see different shapes from various perspectives. We leveraged these paper sculptures as the base for a full system that included many different digital versions for use on the website, social media, collateral, video, and swag. 

Full case study here https://noise13.com/case-study/in-visible-talks-2020/

This style of olive oil, made with ground chili peppers, has a very intense, spicy flavor. Thus, the name and the devil imagery. It is commonly used in Italy as a finishing oil in place of actual chili flakes. We immediately noticed the similarities between the shape of a chili pepper, a devil’s tongue and a devil’s horns. This shape became a core part of the visual system, including a lively pattern of peppers cascading down to nod at the sediment left in the oil by the peppers.

World Wrapps, a West Coast restaurant chain and a pioneer in the creation of gourmet wraps, has been tempting San Francisco foodies since the early 1990s. In 2017, the original owners, three longtime friends, are back to boldly take the chain into the future. One of their first tasks: reposition the brand to show that World Wrapps’s days of innovation aren’t behind them.

In order to recapture the hearts, minds, and appetites of guests, the new brand positioning highlights the global nature of the restaurant’s flavors. We summed this up in a new tagline: Destination Flavor. Travel served as inspiration for an update to the brand positioning and brand identity. The logotype’s stamped texture was inspired by street food signage mixed with a passport stamp, while the color palette conjures images of a Moroccan spice market. 

As H2O+ got ready to launch a new line of sensitive skin care and body products, they challenged us with designing packaging to catch the eyes of a different demographic and signal a shift in the company’s commitment to developing cleaner products.

As Skunk Factory prepared to launch into the market, they came to Noise 13 to create packaging for their handheld vape kit, cartridges, and forthcoming flower.

We loved their established street style aesthetic. With that as inspiration, we built a brand identity that showcases their bold, ambitious, and unapologetic attitude, one that will appeal uniquely to their base of younger (25+) cannabis consumers.

One of Skunk Factory’s primary goals was to elevate their packaging to highlight the product quality. We developed the base packaging using a sleek, uncoated black paper stock with a palette of black, white, and metallic silver. For the flavor indicator, we were inspired by caution tape. By repeating stripes and text—mimicking street signs and streetwear fashions—and incorporating pops of bright color with a glossy sticker, we were able to punch up the look and feel of the brand.

Tipping Point Community is a highly respected Bay Area non-profit committed to fighting poverty by distributing funds from high-profile donors to thoroughly vetted and effective organizations. They sought out Noise 13 to create a campaign concept that could lay the foundation for an annual appeal mailer, series of newsletters, presentation templates and microsite to showcase their annual report.

Tara asked Noise 13 to create a brand and label design that would visually represent her holistic and strongly feminine identity.

The Paso Robles Wine Country Alliance asked Noise 13 to help reimagine its brand and website by creating a user experience that would help travelers easily find what they are looking for, whether they are planning their trip or they are already on the road.

The hit musical Hamilton broke new ground, set new records, and inspired huge numbers of new audiences to come to the theater. SHN, the long-time home for Broadway in San Francisco, experienced a flood of new membership thanks to their production of Hamilton. As the next season approached, SHN had one clear goal in mind: to keep these new members for the upcoming season. They challenged Noise 13 to find creative ways to engage these newer members without ignoring their loyal, longstanding patrons. This is the second season for this series of work

The client brief was essentially a blank slate: create a brand, from scratch, in the hyper-competitive market of cell phone accessories. The only parameters were to focus on women, sell solely online, and set a reasonable price point. Noise 13 worked on everything from brand strategy and naming, to identity, product and package design.

In/Visible Talks is the Bay Area’s leading conference that celebrates the art of design and creativity. Our founder, Dava Guthmiller, is also the co-founder of INVT. Noise 13 does all the brand and design work for this annual conference.

Recognizing white space in the evolving edibles market, the founders of Dovana came to us with a vision of a sophisticated cannabis-infused caramel. The mom and pop duo already had an artisanal-level recipe and wanted to collaborate with us to create a brand strategy, name, and packaging system to match.