Sublime Design: Creature

This creative branding agency represents the forefront of Seattle’s design scene.

Creature might have a blue room (for inspiration) or a red room (for spreadsheet tedium). Select clan members might spend their weeknights unleashing creativity with an old Powell mini•logo in their left hand and a can in their right. They may have procured boxes of wine glasses, only to reverently shatter each one (two of these statements are probably complete fabrication, serving to further their mystique).

For a ten-year-old company, Creature sports the creativity of a 5-year-old. If allowed license to traipse throughout the confines of their artistic brainery, the denizens of Creature’s Capitol Hill office produce the whimsy and acute intelligence that our polis actively essays to avoid. And why should we not practice avoidance? Let artistic consortiums like Creature do the work for us.

I just realized that the last three companies I spotlighted have very similar ad-slogans. Watson Kennedy: “Purveyor of Fine Goods,” Schmancy: “We Sell Awesome Toys,” and Creature: “Creators of Things.” Each slogan contains three or four words and every tagline begins with the purpose (creation/sales) and ends with the product (goods/things/toys/stuff). All are vague (although Creature is extremely vague [serving to further their mystique]). It’s a post-modern practice, much like blogging. Word count is limited and the slogan or statement is completely depthless. We provide, says the slogan. What they provide doesn’t matter, as long as their message establishes providence.

OK.

I want to work for this agency (#tylerhugginsforcreature2012). Creature, as a workplace, fosters controlled abstraction and absurdism and touches upon incredible designs (the minimalist poster [O.S. 10] and the five-minute design [O.S. 5] take the design cupcake por mi). My desire is by no means unique. Plenty of more qualified designers and copywriters have Creature on their occupational wish-list.

Creature’s Creature

Here’s why: Creature’s campaigns are imaginative and humorous, comprising a significant portion of marketing’s more clever echelons. Their Expedia campaign, designed by Ramon Vasquez, raked in numerous awards. Last year, Brian Bosworth and Creature rebranded Seattle’s Best Coffee into the more modern era, manicuring out-of-touch corporate blahdom into a more refined relevance and hiptitude (that’s right, hiptitude).

This is only the tip of a soon-to-melt iceberg. Creature is one of the few companies, esp. in Seattle, that attempt to blur the lines between marketing and artwork, forcing the consumer to scrutinize each campaign and decide for themselves.

Creature | 1517 12th Avenue #101, Seattle | (206) 625-6994