Spilt Ink Brand Identity

The original Spilt Ink logo circa 2006

Back in my college days (Fall 2006), we did a project where we analyzed our strengths and what we loved to do pursuant to creating a business based on our interests. This business idea was more than just a financial and legal proposal, however; we had to brand it ourselves as well. The idea was to design everything, from the logo, to the packaging, to the signage outside, to the website. All of this excited me then, as it does now, for what you see around this block of text is the fruit of that: the Spilt Ink brand.

Of course, it was meant to be a creative writing supply store (parchment, quills, rubber stamps, leather journals and the like) but it was more than that. Spilt Ink was about inspiration. There was a buy/sell/trade aspect (antiques, mostly) and even a LOTO (leave-one-take-one) used book library. It was about avoiding the ball-point bland and handling objects that—like those who had used them before—had an unspoken story to tell. By feeding off of this unspoken narrative, new ideas would be born, incorporating the old ideas in such a way as to give them a new life.

Sadly, I lacked the capital to actually bring about this revolution in story-telling history, otherwise I would be peddling my slightly (and mysteriously) used writing supplies to you. (Care to buy the sharpened stick that Finneas Flannegan used to sign a contract with the devil? How about the quill passed around by the founding fathers when they signed the Declaration of Independence? The leather journal originally belonging to a Puritanical witch that was then exorcised of evil spirits and subsequently went blank?)

For your viewing and inspirational pleasure, I submit the following samples of the Spilt Ink brand (after the jump).