Text hello Tarin
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Raw Sauce was a fermented, probiotic hot sauce made from California-grown ingredients.

During my time in college, I found myself in a friend’s backyard. In one corner, there was a hand-made adobo pizza oven, and the rest of the yard was taken up by a mini ramp with skaters waiting their turn to drop in. After recognizing me as that dude who designed all the posters for the college radio station, a stranger approached me and asked me my name. Alex Harros would later become one of my closest friends, and my first ‘client.’

Beginning in his backyard, Alex made each batch of fermented hot sauce by hand. After winning seed money from an entrepreneurship fund and graduating, Alex moved to the Bay Area to continue his culinary journey. Beyond just something that would make the sauce stand out on the grocery shelf, Alex was missing a visual system that could help a person understand that the sauce was hand-made, probiotic, and was started/grown from scratch.

Everything about this creative process stemmed from the understanding that this product was grown on local farms, hand-crafted by a couple of people in a kitchen, and supplied to local co-ops, restaurants, and grocers. The only rules were to convey the idea of water and sunlight, let it take root and grow, and see whether or not the result was harvestable. Simplicity and clarity are critical to catching the eye of a busy grocery shopper.

To build this system, I used visuals of home-grown peppers and chose colors for the packaging that reflected the products organic nature. I established a hand-drawn lettering system that spread across logo, packaging and illustrations to the digital experience that also felt organic as if it was grown itself.

Stocked in Berkeley Bowl, Tokyo Fish Market, Alameda Natural Grocery, Erewhon Market, Daily Driver, The Market

︎︎︎ collaborators: Alex Harros
*endorsed by Joey Brezinski and Neen Williams.
 

currently based  //  NEW YORK CITY  |  currently based  //  NEW YORK CITY  |  currently based  //  NEW YORK CITY  |  currently based  //  NEW YORK CITY |