Archive - notes on the creative visuals of the past.

I was thinking about the growth of Flowerboy and wanted to give some of you who are new or maybe just haven’t scrolled back in a while a taste and insight into how the visual side of the brand has changed. Here is a post with the first logo. The original look was meant to be kind of cute and fun. Approachable I guess.

A good place to start is with the question : “was the run club part of the plan?” An easy answer is NO. It started with 4 people and we sort of kept doubling each week.  We also were never big runners before starting the club. I honestly never quite understood why people did it. That’s a whole other blog, read along to see some of the first run club posters.

The poster below was the first edition of the 10 km distance. I remember showing up having run ( struggled ) that distance maybe twice prior. A bunch of topless dudes with heart rate monitors and abs ready to go at 6 am.  I was intimidated, I felt a sense of imposter syndrome, but I think this run gave me the perspective of what would set our run club apart.

Looking at this post now I see that it resonates in a similar way to our current messaging. I’m grateful that our run club is so diverse. We made it through the “run clubs are the new dating app” moment and from my perspective women feel comfortable joining our runs. That is so important. Running for me has always been a tool for exploration and time in nature. So the mushrooms and happy flowers connect those dots. 

A nod to Forest Gump of course. In the beginning a lot of people asked for us to start later. I always liked starting in the dark and the idea of getting that win of a run in early. You get to see the sunrise, the temperature is reasonable and it attracts the type of people I wanted to be around. 

I have always been attracted to certain brands and their messaging. By illustrating existing photos from their pages was a good way to get their attention in an organic way.  I remember this post getting the attention of Ciele which was in my mind a positive step towards what our brand is today. We carried their products and it seemed to be a bit of a legitimizer at the time. We still never had any limitations within our branding and I was having a lot of fun figuring out what exactly Flowerboy is and who its for.

This one came from speaking with a local business owner who is in his 50’s and was training for Marathon De Sables. (It’s an unsupported 250km trot through the desert ) I told him to pop by run club and the copy in this post came from his response. LOL

Again, just having fun and I think it resonates and speaks to the essence of what I consider our run club to be. It’s approachable and I would like to think stood out on your feed. I think the idea of having to dig deeper into the brand and the fact a lot of people didn’t ( and still might not ) know that Flowerboy is a coffee window first and foremost.

I remember making this and really digging it. People who like to run probably like bananas. A lot of the designs that followed this were sort of re-purposed ad’s that already existed somewhere in the depths of the internet. This moment of having no rules and a bit more scattered visuals was so fun and necessary to get our look to where it is now.

I feel like I can go on forever because of the consistency of making 2 new posters every week for nearly two years . Might dig deeper into our visuals further in a future blog and have been considered making a coffee table book or magazine to feature them all.

Let us know in the comments some of your favorite designs, if a book is something you would be into and what first connected you to the brand.

Thanks, and hope to run and share a coffee with you soon!