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| Client: | Wink, Inc. Public Relations, Scottsdale, AZ |
| Category: | Charitable fundraising project |
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My aunt, Wink Blair, a Louisiana native and owner of an Arizona public relations firm, wished to develop a unique fundraising effort to help Hurricane Katrina’s victims in New Orleans (a.k.a. “The Big Easy”). Her idea was to work with other Arizona entrepreneurs to raise money for the American Red Cross and the Salvation Army by creating and selling custom-designed, New Orleans-themed T-shirts, which would be co-sponsored by Phoenix businesses.
Wink and her partners entitled the project “Arizona’s Helping Save The Big Easy,” and wanted to get it underway as quickly as possible. Ultimately, they found it difficult to arrive at a logo design for the T-shirts that balanced:
- The spirit of New Orleans
- The profound tragedy that had befallen it
- The hope that could be derived through donations to this effort
Further, to keep costs to a minimum, it was determined that the front of the shirt could only utilize two colors, with the back of the shirt utilizing only one of those colors.
Knowing of my fondness for New Orleans, Wink asked me if I’d be willing to donate my services to help meet these challenges. I agreed, but suggested one more criteria to the challenge: to make the design easily adaptable for use in other states and cities, a la the “Hard Rock Café’” logo approach. Wink and her partners agreed.
Below is the design that I crafted, and Wink’s team adopted, that met all their criteria:
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“In less than a week, and working from nearly 2,000 miles away, Jon conceived of, designed and produced the art for this extremely original and classy logo, using only two colors. The speed with which he crafted this logo enabled our volunteers to begin working quickly, and resulted in ours being one of the very first Katrina fundraisers to get started in Arizona.
“We’ve sold nearly 1,500 shirts so far, making our fundraiser a huge success. This could never have been accomplished without Jon’s talent, professionalism and responsiveness.”
– Wink Blair, President, “Arizona’s Helping to Save the Big Easy”
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