The Challenge
Saucey was mid-rebrand with an external agency involved — but the internal team didn't fully trust that the agency had the company's best interests at heart. They needed an internal creative counterweight: someone who understood the brand, could pressure-test the agency's decisions, and make sure what landed was genuinely right for the business. Not just what looked good in a deck.
Our Goals
Deliver a brand book that could go live immediately across the website and app — actionable, coherent, and ready to ship — while keeping the external agency accountable throughout the process.
The Creative Approach
The brief was about moments. Not the bar, not the big occasion — the specific, slightly indulgent, stay-at-home moment. The shower beer. Sunday afternoon. The 9pm impulse. I built the brand around those touchpoints: retro warmth with a modern polish. A system that felt familiar enough to trust and fresh enough to want. The visual direction drew on the pleasure of domestic ritual — warm typography, an analog-rooted palette, illustration with character. Something that could hold across a phone screen and a New York billboard without losing itself.
The team
Partnered with the Saucey internal team and external agency Paradis, acting as creative lead, internal brand steward, and final approver across the full visual identity system.
Production Highlights
Full brand system production: logo direction, color palette, typography system, illustration art direction, brand guidelines, digital design specs, and OOH artwork — deployed across New York, Chicago, and Dallas. Delivered as a complete, print-and-screen-ready system that went live across the website and app on the same day.
The Impact
The brand rollout gave Saucey a coherent system that extended from digital to major-market OOH without losing integrity. The campaigns in New York, Chicago, and Dallas drove new user acquisition and re-engagement — results that came directly from a brand that finally felt like a single, confident voice.
3
Major US markets for OOH campaigns (NYC, Chicago, Dallas)
$10.2M
VC-backed company at time of engagement
$113B
US alcohol retail market Saucey was competing in
1
Brand book — shipped live across web and app from day one
