CARTEL’s Third Anniversary
Downtown Opening Party
900 N. Tucker Blvd
2023 was a big year for CARTEL. We experienced significant growth, but our longing for permanence was jeopardized when the space we were leasing transferred ownership. The feeling of uncertainty escalated as time dragged on. As 2024 drew near, the executive decision was made to migrate the team to the Downtown North Insight District in St. Louis. We found it suitable for this year's anniversary graphics to reflect our move to 900 N Tucker Blvd, the former St. Louis Post-Dispatch Building and our new home.
Exploring beyond the clean and colorful vectorial illustration CARTEL is known for
Believe it or not, distilling an aesthetic for your own design firm is a hard task. A sense of celebration and arrival can be represented in several ways. We really wanted to explore beyond the clean and colorful vectorial illustration, CARTEL is known for. The grunge stylistic approach was our starting point since its hand-crafted, textural quality is similar to that of the printing presses. A sense of imperfection and grit felt just right to convey the urban feel of Downtown. The color palette is a modified version of our colors to reflect the newspaper—off-white, ink black, and red. The composition is grounded with a collaged cityscape of St. Louis, including The Globe building, T-REX, City Museum, the nearby radio tower, the Arch, one of Maxar’s satellites in a nod to Downtown North Insight District and our Post building accentuated with red. The primary text (900 N Tucker) is a custom type expression, but ATF’s Poster Gothic Round and Tobias Frere-Jones’ Garage Gothic were used to reflect the rust-belt characteristics of the place.
The final graphic was used on invite cards, the online event banner, motion graphics, and on the cover of CARTEL’s inaugural tabloid— a 20-page catalog of our favorite projects of the year.
Creating the Motion Piece
We created a motion piece that illustrates the odyssey of CARTEL’s paper boat to The Post Building, while honoring the medium that created the graphic design profession: the poster. From beginning to end, the red paper boat interacts with iconic poster pieces from graphic history in a homage to the classic posters that inspire us: Todos A La Plaza (COR, Cuba, 1970), Metropolis (Schulz-Neudamm, Germany, 1927), Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (El Lissitzky, Russia, 1919), Now! (Rostgaard, Cuba, 1965), and Le Chat Noir (Steinlen, France, 1896). Some of them are more known than others. The final animation was formatted for both landscape and portrait mode for an optimal viewing experience. For the music, an intro sound bite from Doja Cat’s Paint the Town Red tied it all together.
