Chapter 10: fond of fonts | scrappy not crappy content | viral spaghetti
plus some pictures of little sandwiches
Party like it’s 1999: typeface edition
Bucket hats. Baggy wide leg jeans. Cropped ribbed tops. The 90s are back in a big way. Britney is making music again. Ben Affleck and J. Lo are finally married, 20 years later. (Ok, technically they were engaged for the first time back in the early 2000s, but I think I speak for everyone when I say they will forever be associated with their respective late 90s bangers: Good Will Hunting and Selena.) As a geriatric millennial, I view this 90s comeback with a mix of amusement, confusion, and a smidge of pride. Our middle school sartorial choices has some social capital! If I see a Gen Z kid wearing a pair of JNCO jeans I will pass out.
As the 90s aesthetic seeps into fashion and pop culture, it’s also had a pretty significant influence on recent marketing and branding. Check out this video announcing the launch of the Emma Chamberlain x Aritizia collab - everything about it is peak 90s - the hazy lo-fi film quality, the coastal grandma style outfits Emma is wearing, the retro game show-esque set.
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The buzzy brand Vacation is essentially one big 90s vibe:
One element of branding that is often not given enough credit for grounding us in a very specific place/time/feeling is the humble ‘ol typeface. With both the Aritizia video and Vacation branding, the very first thing that cues us into their nostalgic aesthetic is the typeface. The main copy typeface that Vacation uses looks very similar if not identical to the typeface used for Emma Chamberlain’s name in the Aritizia video.
They both use a serif typeface that has pretty tight spacing and a more vertical orientation. It’s a dramatic departure from the stripped down sans serif typefaces that have dominated in recent years. Vacation specifically uses a typeface called ITC Garamond, which fun fact, is essentially a dupe of Apple Garamond, Apple’s official corporate typeface from the 80s through the early 2000s.
Just to show you how much this typeface defined the 90s, here are the ads from some iconic brands from that era vs. more recent ads:
For my fellow 90s kids - bathe in this likely fleeting moment of nostalgia while it lasts. Let’s just hope Comic Sans doesn’t start trending soon.
Content Creation Tips for Those with Champagne Taste on a Beer Budget
I completed my first photo shoot for Huhu to get the main creative assets I need for launch and it was truly an eye-opening experience. (One thing about starting your own business is that it humbles the crap out of you. You think you’ve done something for awhile and know a thing or two. Turns out, you know very little.) I’ve worked on many photo/video shoots in the past, but done typically through a production company or creative agency that handled all of the details. As a person on the brand side, you never truly see how ‘the sausage gets made’ when it comes to creative content. This time around, I was also working on a very tight budget and had to figure out how to get high quality content, but without the expensive price tag.
For a brand marketer, this is a typical workflow for creative development:
But there are many more steps involved:
There’s the neverending conflict between brand people and creative/agency people when it comes to the sticker shot of creative development. If you work in Marketing, I’m sure you’ve heard or said this before:
“I’m sorry, that’s going to cost how much?”; “we hired a photographer/director, why do we need so many other people?!”; “but can we do this for half the cost, and keep the same quality?”
I’ve seen both sides of it and I think there’s really no shortcuts when it comes to creative development. It takes a lot of planning, work and people to get things done. But, based on my experience, here are some suggestions to make your shoot scrappy, not crappy:
1. Hire everyone directly - full-service creative agencies can handle every detail end-to-end, but it’ll cost you. I knew from the get go that working with an agency was a nonstarter for me because of the extra fees. So I acted as the agency and sourced partners myself. Contracting with creative partners, the shoot location, talent directly was probably the biggest cost saving decision I made.
2. Do it yourself - there are so many small administrative tasks involved in creating content. Most agencies will hire junior level people to do things like source props, transport equipment, steam wardrobe, manage catering, etc. So, if you want to save money on labor, channel your inner Andy Sachs from The Devil Wears Prada, and do it yourself.
3. Keep the shoot short & sweet - this may be stating the obvious, but a multiple day shoot will cost more than a one day shoot. Create a shoot plan that minimizes location changes, complex shot set-ups and break downs, many wardrobe changes, so you can get everything done in 10 hours.
4. Have a very clear and detailed shot list - on the subject of making a shoot as tight as possible to cut down on time, create a detailed list of each shot you want to capture - including how props will be set up, how talent will be placed in the shot, what wardrobe will be used. This will cut down on time spent trying out a bunch of different ideas in real time. Leave room for experimentation, but put some guard rails on it so you’re not wasting time.
5. Create content in a way that gets more bang for your buck - back in the day you’d do a whole photo or video shoot just for one specific media channel, but now there are content needs for a zillion different platforms, which all have different proportions. To save money and make your content work harder, shoot everything as wide as possible so you can crop content to all kinds of different aspect ratios. Shoot content so it can be turned into layered files so different items can be removed or changed. This can help make one asset look like multiple different assets and gives you a lot more flexibility in use.
Here are some stills from the photo shoot. Website is almost done - can’t wait to share it with you all soon!
Spaghetti Recipe from The Bear
The Bear on Hulu was the breakout bop of the summer. For anyone who hasn’t watched this show yet, drop whatever you’re doing and go queue it up! The show doesn’t have any A-list actors attached to it, there wasn’t much press before it was released, and it’s not a fancy, expensive production. It went viral because the acting and the writing are amazing. The show centers around small family-run restaurant in Chicago and, without giving too much away, there is a spaghetti recipe that is a major topic of discussion throughout the show. Buzzfeed published a recipe (along with overly detailed step-by-step instructions), and I decided to make it and see if it really lives up to the hype.
If you don’t feel like scrolling on Buzzfeed for what feels like 10 minutes to find the instructions, here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:
1 28 oz. can of San Marzano whole peeled tomatoes
1 yellow onion, cut in half
1/2 stick unsalted butter
1/2 cup olive oil
2 cups of basil
5 cloves of garlic, peeled and smashed
salt and pepper to taste
grated parmesan cheese
pasta water
1 box of spaghetti (or noodle of your choice)
optional: red pepper flakes
Cooking instructions:
brown the butter over medium heat
add the 2 onion halves cut side down and sear for a few minutes until the onions start to brown at the edges
add in the canned tomatoes
cook everything over medium heat for ~20 minutes, stirring occasionally and breaking down the whole tomatoes
In a separate pan, cook the olive oil, basil leaves, garlic and optional red pepper flakes over medium heat for about 10 minutes, until the basil leaves are cooked down to a dark green color.
Pour the basil olive oil mixture into a blender and blend until smooth, like the consistency of pesto
Cook the pasta and reserve about 1/2 cup of the pasta water
Take the onion halves out of the pasta sauce and discard
Mix the basil oil mixture into the sauce
Add in the cooked pasta and combine with sauce, add some of the reserve pasta water until the sauce thickens up
add parmesan
End result:
Final verdict:
Was this a tasty spaghetti recipe? Yes
Was this the best spaghetti sauce I’ve ever tasted? No
Could you have accomplished the same thing with marinara sauce and a dollop of pesto? Yes
If you feel like making fancy-ish spaghetti, I recommend this recipe. If you are in a rush and don’t feel like cleaning a bunch of extra pots, pans, and kitchen equipment, I’d stick with your regular spaghetti recipe.
A Back-to-School Snack Hack
It’s almost officially fall - the season of pumpkin spice lattes, Bama Rush Tok, and a time when the after school snack requests go up by +500% vs. prior period. I saw this Tik Tok about a snack hack and it is just genius. American Innovation is NOT dead. I didn’t save the video, so of course I’m never going to see her content again. I’m sorry Woman on The Internet, I can’t properly attribute this to you. But here’s my re-creation of her snack:
Step 1: She takes an entire package of Kings Hawaiian rolls
Step 2: cuts it horizontally in half, like it’s one large loaf of bread
Step 3: makes one gigantic sandwich using sliced cheese and deli meat
Step 4: she then puts the top section of the bread back on the sandwich and cuts the whole thing into individual sandwiches
Step 5: She puts the whole finished thing back into the plastic bag
Step 6: And now she has 12 ready made sandwiches she can dole out to her kids whenever they’re hungry and need a snack. So smart!
Miscellaneous Links
I discovered this podcast through an ad for it on another podcast (I’m in too deep at this point) and it is pure delight & fun, but also educational. I recommend the Beyoncé Renaissance, Harry Styles, and Lizzo episodes if you need a place to start.
Speaking of podcasts, if you are interested in the intersection of marketing, ecommerce, the business of beauty and celebrities, this show is another great listen. Dulma creates really insightful content about these three topics on Tik Tok.