The Hand of the Artist, Radical Brand Design
Authenticity is one of our core values and as a small team of artists we knew it was important to share our creative spirit in the brand design for Fortuna. We begin with a physical, hand printed piece of artwork in Mexico City. After lengthy conversation about beauty, farming, cacao… family print maker Cesar Ramirez produces a piece of original art, carving out the design by hand and printing it at the fine art studio La Trampa Grafica in the historic downtown district of Mexico’s capital city. The piece used throughout our website depicts cacao pods, beans and leaves. All chocolate comes from the cacao bean. It is the primary source all chocolate makers work with in some form.
Fortuna is an art collective, an experimental band, a radical community of creatives. When we came together to design the branding for our chocolate we knew we would follow our own path. After the original artwork is hand printed Fortuna family print maker Cesar Ramirez scans the artwork and prepares a digital copy to send to Fortuna’s graphic designer in Colorado (Unceeded Tséstho’e (Cheyenne), hinono’eino’ biito’owu’ (Arapaho) and Núu-agha-tʉvʉ-pʉ̱ (Ute) territory). Once received, the digital artwork is taken apart and special sections are chosen that show gesture, where the ‘hand of the artist’ is clearly present. We are chocolate makers and the gesture of art and craft are very much an expression of what our chocolate tastes like.
The DIY (do it yourself) can encourage you to do a lot of learning! As a small team of chocolate makers developing a business culture of our won we are continually learning new skills. Building and maintaining our website has been one of these new skills. After receiving the digital artwork and making specific selections the artwork is reconfigured into the necessary parts for our branding. Our design process is conceptual first and begins as a conversation about the spirit of Fortuna. One of the recurring topics is the idea of the divine feminine; the conscious energy of creation that materializes in the budding cacao flowers and in the crystals that combine to give chocolate its different forms. It is also witness to the historical relationship between farmer and tree. One of the original pieces that artist Cesar Ramirez created, inspired by these conversations, was a portrait of a powerful Feme adorned by nature. Last year the eye inspired a transformation and became the foundation for two murals, a chocolate installation, and all of our current labels and shipping materials.
During the first week of COVID quarantine in Colorado we covered the wall of the office with a brightly colored mural and the double eye, splitting cell, cacao insect, vulva ovum appeared representing another of our cores; Engagement and intentional awareness. The next core to materialize what the full phase sunmoon and the pinwheel stars illustrating the cycles of time and the seasons of growth in the environment and in ourselves; Wellness in all of our phases of being. The budding cacao flowers and the clear, flowing waters that honor the potential of our future world; Sustainability and the planting of seeds of tomorrow.
After establishing the visual representation of our core values we designed our first line of merchandise and it was incredible to see the hand carved prints transform from digital re-compositions into a hand printed object once more, reclaiming a physical presence. The journey our merchandise takes to reach you moves across the hand made and digital borderlands. Through the merchandise design process a new concept arose in our general brand design, we call it radical profit transfer. 100% of the profits from the sale of all of our merchandise is reinvested into the powerful work being done around us. We wanted to acknowledge the stolen lands we are currently residing on, we wanted to demand an end to family detention at our political borders, we wanted to support independent journalism as it took personal risk to bear witness to injustice, we wanted to demand and end to the racist , classicist so called ‘War on Drugs’ that has been waged across both American continents and beyond. Profit transfer from merchandise sales does not replace a lifetime of struggle towards justice, it is a small step forward on the journey.
Last year we launched our new website and each week we update it and work to understand more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) in order to reach you through the digital noise of the internet. Navigating away from in-person events last year was a big shift for us, usually we spend half the year rolling up to the local farmers market in our mobile micro-factory. We built a long wooden deck and a large double window that opens allowing local eaters to perch at the bar and taste chocolate with us. Our website is now our digital home and welcome you to connect with us here, ask questions send us notes and explore chocolate making from our perspective as radical creatives. It is also a place where you can learn more about the people we profit transfer to and other ways to get involved as a part of the solutions that are being designed everyday.
all of our branding starts in an art studio in Mexico city
after being digitized, we make selections to show gesture
the divine Feme and an eye of engagement
engagement, sustainability, wellness
radical profit transfer to fellow change makers