Genius designer Leigh Okies was the first to suggest that it would be fun to work up a branding suite for the Ranch egg operation, to de-anonymize somewhat the cartons of product that have been dribbling out to friends and colleagues in San Francisco, Berkeley, and the Valley. Mischievously, I thought it would be fun to mock the overwrought vernacular and processes of the corporate identity industry for which the Bay Area is the tragic epicenter.
We arrived at the Decadent Hen name without so much as a whiff of focus group or facilitation session. Fact is, the moniker fits to a tee my highfalutin overentitled birds. “Productions” was a later nod to Hollywood glam, and an evocation of the general fake earnestness of the endeavor (“Watch out, here be real Entrepreneurs!“)
Leigh ended up too busy playing with some kids named Crispin, Porter, and Bogusky to do my graphic design, so I enlisted Dennis Culver, the gifted Portland comic artist with whom I had worked recently on some off-center but well-received technology ad campaigns. My creative brief was something along the lines of “very female, upper crust socialite, slightly debauched.”
I contributed the typography – hey, and I haven’t even seen Helvetica: The Movie! – and after some considerable flailing in Adobe Illustrator, this popped out:
What criticisms I have collected, so far, relate mostly to the objectified bosominess of the bird [ed: So they never heard of chicken breasts?] and the potential unsavoriness of eggs tainted by alcohol and cigarettes. Sorry people, but the latter iconography is how I insulate my superficially wholesome backyard agriproject from association with tedious pure-food faddism. The messaging is all about unselfconscious joy in the pursuit of pleasure. About deliciousness trumping danger. About raw and uplifting decadence.
