Grub-N-HipHop
A food truck and live hip-hop event series, branded from the logo and a custom typeface to a full boombox trailer wrap and the stage.
- ForStartup
- Grub-N-HipHop, as a core team member
- Role
- Creative Director & Lead Designer
- Year
- 2018 to 2022
- Result
- One brand carried across a trailer wrap, a live stage, shirts, and playlists
- Scope
The brief
Grub-N-HipHop was a food-and-music startup in Austin: a food truck and a live event series built around hip-hop culture. I was one of its two core team members and the one who turned ideas into real things, which meant figuring out everything from the brand to the wrap to the stage myself. It needed a brand loud enough to carry a trailer, a tent, and a stage.
The approach
I built the look from the culture it celebrated: graffiti lettering, spray paint drips, and a boombox. A round main logo works on a sticker or a stage screen, a spray-painted GnHH secondary logo with the Texas outline carries the street side, and a custom Grub typeface ties every headline together.
From sketch to mark
The logo started on paper: the round badge first, then the blocky GRUB lettering and the loose HipHop script, worked out by hand before any of it went digital.
The logo family
One main logo with spray paint drips for big moments, a clean no-drip version for small sizes and stickers, and a GnHH secondary logo for the street side.
Color and type
Navy, orange, red, and blue, picked to read loud on a trailer wrap and a stage screen.
The Grub typeface
I drew Grub letter by letter for the brand's headlines, starting rough and tightening every form until the whole alphabet matched the GRUB in the logo.
The boombox trailer
I turned the food truck trailer into a boombox: speakers on the sides, a tape deck and buttons on the front, and the logos and handles big enough to read from across a lot. I planned it on paper first, measuring every panel and speaker so the design would fit the real trailer. The wrap went on in 2018.
Merch
Shirts built from the same parts: the logo, the custom Grub type, and the brand colors.
Playlist covers
Grub-N-HipHop kept the music going between events with its own playlists, each with a cover in the brand's voice.
Live events
The same brand ran the events: the tent, the step and repeat, and the stage backdrops behind every performer.
Motion for the stage
For the events I made motion pieces to run on the screens and projectors behind the performers: a neon version of the logo, an animated Austin skyline, looping stage backdrops, and an intro video for each headliner.
Pitches it opened doors to
Grub-N-HipHop launched right before SXSW, and the brand got us invited to hip-hop events all over downtown Austin. That exposure connected us with artists from well beyond Austin and the brands trying to reach their fans, and I turned those openings into proposals, press kits, and a sell sheet.
See the pitchesHide the pitches
- Swisher Sweets
A partnership proposal for a branded event in Austin that was approved for $10K in event funding.
- Minus Gravity press kit
An electronic press kit for a San Antonio hip-hop and R&B group signed to Capitol Records.
- Minus Gravity proposal
A sponsorship proposal for events built around the group, from the package to the return.
- Grub-N-HipHop sponsor deck
A sponsor pitch for future Grub-N-HipHop events, designed in the brand's own loud colors.
- Mvstermind x Dr. Scholl's
A sell sheet I designed from the artist's details, explaining the ideas behind his custom shoe.
The outcome
One identity that held together across every surface a small business touches: a logo, a typeface, a guide, a vehicle, a tent, a stage, the shirts, and the playlists. It is the kind of complete, hands-on brand rollout I bring to clients.