Client
_
Services
_
Brand Identity
Logo Design
Print Design
Web Design
Penrose
Synopsis
_
Initiated and hosted by Austin marketing firm JDI, Penrose is an intimate gathering of the most intriguing people in the science world — researchers, inventors, founders, entrepreneurs, executives, artists, and storytellers.
As the lead designer I was in charge of crafting the event’s brand, with future, reoccurring gatherings and other kinds of events in mind. And the most important part? An attention-grabbing physical invitation to the main yearly event.
Direction was to keep the brand restrained and minimal, while still evoking themes of the location: Marfa in West Texas.
Logo + Brand
It’s always helpful when a designer can be privy to the naming process, as so much inspiration can be derived from other names that were in consideration, and hearing overall themes and through lines.
Once the name had been decided, the logo for this event went through a couple iterations, with many stakeholders taking part. The client loved the resulting mark. I was most excited about this monogram mark, so I was also happy when this one was selected!
The client was excited to use an unexpected, bright palette, inspired by the often overlooked colors of the desert flora and fauna.
Invitation 2024
Thread and paper: The mixing of these two unexpected media has always interested me, so I was stoked to use this technique on this project. So, first things first: Finding a local embroiderist. Thanks to an Austin Chronicle article from 2021, I discovered local artist Erin Guevara-Inman.
Erin had past experience embroidering paper. We made sure to consult her on choosing the appropriate paper weight (that would additionally still work with letterpress). Then the letterpressing was done by Alisa Marrow of Percolator Press. We made sure to include a dot matrix guide for the embroidery portion.
The invitation pack comprised four pieces: the embroidered invite, a typewritten letter from JDI’s CEO (with a hand-stamped logo at the top left), an illustrated map of Marfa, and a bellyband to hold it all together. Once stacked, the wordmark belly band covers the same debossed wordmark on the invitation.
Over 300 invitations were produced and mailed to hand-selected potential attendees.
Process
I initially pitched two additional concepts: One concept used vellum for a layering effect, and the other would use an eyelet for some type of twist-hide-reveal interactive element. I mocked up something fairly simple to communicate the three directions, but the embroidery idea really captured the team’s attention.
Once chosen, I spent some time settling on the embroidery spot illustration. It needed the right balance: something realistic within our time constraints, within our freelancer budget, and an appropriate nod to the event’s setting (without being appropriative). My dot matrix sketchbook was very helpful in iterating on this.
Website
The website was likewise minimal in design, using a portion of the embroidered piece from the invitation. My colleague Talia Bromberg designed the interior pages, which branched out visually and incorporated color from the brand’s extended palette.
The website evolved as the event approached, and a password-protected opt-in attendee directory was added after the event.
Event 2024
The event’s home base was the Hotel St. George in Marfa, Texas.
As attendees checked in, they were greeted with swag, including a colorful scarf from local business (Garza Marfa) customized with a Penrose logo tag.
Shanna Gerlach: Event Photography
Invitation
2025
For the following year’s invite, the ask from year one remained: Make an eye-catching invitation that people would be loathe to throw away. It was time for letterpress AND gold foil.
Ideation
I was excited to revive an unselected concept from the 2024 brainstorm: Making the invitation interactive, revealing information once rotated in a certain way.
I immediately rethought one large thing from the original rough concept (mocks below): Why did it need to be a circle? The Penrose logo is almost a perfect square, so using that shape made more sense. And once turned 45 degrees, two squares make the perfect shape for an 8-point compass rose. I just needed to figure out how we could achieve the rotation within the layout.
Process
Like the previous year’s invitation, I wanted nods to the event’s setting.
The central graphic was the four-pointed star from the Penrose logo, and the floral filagree is a West Texas native flower called the Davis Mountain Mock Vervain. I left placeholder spaces in the corners for the Marfa-themed ordinal (northwest, etc) illustrations. I knew I wanted to pull in my colleague Shanna Gerlach to help decide which pieces of Marfa we wanted represented.
Max of Koch Printing in East Austin did the incredible letterpress work. I really cannot recommend him enough.
To create the axis of rotation, we manually hammered an eyelet through the center of the two pieces of paper. This allowed for the right amount of tension between the two pieces: The person holding it can rotate the pieces freely, but would stay in place if not being touched.
More coming soon.