In June of 2018, I had the opportunity to create a brand identity for a craft beer bar and music venue that a small group of partners planned to open in Boyle Heights; the very same neighborhood had been living in for nine years and where my mother’s side of the family settled after immigrating from Mexico. I knew any establishment coming into the area would be scrutinized by locals because of the changes that have occurred in the area. Push-back from vocal community groups was a definite possibility.

My goal was to ensure that a new bar coming into the neighborhood would immediately feel like a part of the community and be well-received by locals, while also attracting patrons from other parts of the L.A. area. In order to do that I brought as much of Boyle Heights into the project as I could. Xelas (Pronounced “chelas,” which is Chicano slang for beer, but with an X.) has been warmly welcomed into the community since its soft opening in September of 2018.

I also took on the task of creating social media content for the venue’s weekly events and handled most of the graphic design needs during the first year of operation.

LOGO

Xelas’ logo needed to have a rough handmade aesthetic. But instead of something hand-painted, I decided to create a lino-cut logo that would inevitably have some grit to it. Ultimately, the main logo would be made up of letters that had the same bold and blocky quality as many of the painted business names found in the area.

The floral logo was part of the original idea for an earlier version of the main logo and is used to take up more space if necessary. The block letter and shadow variation is typically used for the venue’s music-focused promotional designs for social media.

Color for all logos vary as needed and I also created an icon that I had hoped to find a use for.

THE BAR

The Xelas partners requested designs for various menus that could be easily printed and laminated in-house for themselves and East L.A. Barbecue Company, the current pop-up restaurant in their kitchen. The happy hour menu is sized to fit in a plastic table-top holder. Those can be seen here.

Xelas’ constantly-changing draft menu is displayed above the bar on a monitor that is set at the bar’s profile page on a Yelp-ish craft beer website. The name escapes me at the moment.

The color tabletop reserved sign allowed me to use the Circle X icon some more.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Up until the end of 2018, I was responsible for creating designs for nearly every weekly event in a variety of different social media platform sizes – Instagram feed and story posts, Facebook events, and Eventbrite listings. Each weekly event is intended to have a consistent design theme that can be replicated for 10 to 12 weeks. There was often a motion element added to the Instagram designs.