American Blown

Peter West is an Emmy award-winning filmmaker whose numerous documentaries about glass-blower Dale Chihuly have been broadcast nationally on PBS and screened at film festivals around the world. So when he approached me about designing a logo for a new glass venture he was working on — American Blown: Artist Engineered — I was thrilled.

Peter and his friend  Carlo Parriotti envisioned a project and company “where glass blowers and artists could work, earn a professional wage, and accrue shop time to experiment and make their own work.” Their initial products were a series of American pint glasses and American double glasses, all hand-blown by artists in Seattle.

Unlike other logo projects I’ve worked on this one included requirements that were as much functional as aesthetic — if not more so. The logo needed to work both as a mold in the glass-blowing process and as the foot for the finished glasses, and for both purposes thick lines and fonts were necessary. In the end we designed a simple, clean, and utilitarian brand that suggests mid-century American industry, but re-purposed for this contemporary incarnation of a traditional art form.

Product photos by Russell Johnson and Heather Rasmussen