One of the most unique things about Circa Design Studio is the ability to develop, work on, and grow personal creative projects. One of the oldest Circa Creative projects, also the brainchild of co-founder Tori Thomas, is Politiquo. What started as a simple activity of lettering the irreverent things that politicians say grew into an introductory skills exercise, with every Circa designer and new fellow creating a "Politiquote"—an illustration depicting a political quote in a non-partisan way. The goal isn't to take sides, but rather to take a controversial topic, be uniquely creative, and create something accessible for everyone. Over the past 5 years, this exercise has grown into a full-blown brand.
As an organization, Circa decided to sell Politiquo gear at Nashville's premier, handcrafted, artisans flea-market, Porter Flea 2020. However, due to COVID 19, the market organizers made the last minute decision to switch the market to a virtual experience—every vendor would sell three featured items from their own website and Porter Flea would simply direct users from their website to individual vendors websites. Unfortunately, Politiquo did not have an up-to-date website or fully operational ecommerce store. With a deadline of a little less than 3 weeks, half of our team finished developing the final merchandise while the other half designed and built a new website from scratch.
I assisted one of our senior designers in creating high-fi's, learning the basics of Sketch on the fly. Our goal was to create a site that would be capable of selling our three featured items for the 2020 Porter-in-Place Flea Market, illustrate the spirit of Politiquo, be able to adapt to various projects that occur or might evolve under the Politiquo umbrella, and yet still reflect the home brand of Circa Design.
Aside from assisting with the high-fi's, I drafted all of the copy for the website, which was then reviewed by our marketing director. With a little guidance and encouragement from some of the staff illustrators, I then refined my rough placeholder illustrations and they were used as the header graphics on the Store and Politiquotes internal pages.
