We are so, so grateful for 2020. 

That might sound strange, but we are eternal optimists here at Carew Co. The Great Recession hit just a year after our founding, so we learned early on that there is always a way forward — and that path to brighter things is forged by relationships.

It’s been seven months since Gov. Brad Little issued a stay-at-home order in response to COVID-19.

I first met Thomas Walsh over a decade ago when we were paired up for the AIGA Idaho “Mix Mentor” program, which matched Boise State graphic design students with industry professionals. The idea was to give soon-to-graduate students a mentor so they could ask questions and get an idea of what the real world was like.

When we first started collecting experiences for this post a few weeks ago, it seemed like Idaho was cautiously heading out of the woods. We thought, “Maybe we can share what we learned during quarantine?” It has been such a rollercoaster experience and we’ve each reacted in our own unique ways — there have been moments of joy, despair, creativity, hope, camaraderie. There have been new opportunities and grief over what we have lost.

Aaron Kvarfordt just started with us, but we’re already beginning to think of him as a human Swiss Army knife. He creates super clean, solid typography. He can illustrate by hand or digitally. He designs prototypes and mockups for packaging. He knows how to build brands from the ground up.

We’ve had a great year thanks to our awesome clients and creative, up-for-anything staff. Through 365 days of challenging — and rewarding — work, we’ve racked up big numbers and gone through so much coffee. So, so much coffee.

We are skilled at many things: crafting strategic marketing plans, conceiving creative advertising campaigns, building beautiful websites, designing thoughtful interfaces, and harnessing technology. That said, we are Graphic Designers! We value illustration, typography, color theory, infographics, and all things design. Specifically, we help our clients meet business goals with strategic design — design that gets results and hits your target audience right in the kisser. When hired, we ask a lot of questions of our clients and we push them to share their expertise. We're in it together, striving to reach a common end goal...and, exceed it.

In order to sell luxury tours in the United States, Claude was in need of Brand that truly represents the Bordeaux experience. The Brand Identity needed to capture the heritage and juxtaposition of historic Bordeaux culture and modern/luxury travel. Our design team knew we had something when Ryan Lascano shared his initial sketch of a hand-drawn typographic mark. Our clients loved the reflection of traditional typography and the highlighted '33' to represent the French code for the region.

We're thrilled to be moving at a blistering pace three years into the game. As someone recently mentioned on Twitter, "Time flies when you work 80 hours a week." We've certainly worked hard in the past three years or so (but, not quite that hard).

Cupcake Collective, an event headed by Carew Co.’s Leigh Ann Dufurrena, was held August 15th at The Linen Building.  With 2500 cupcakes, over 100 cupcake making participants and hundreds of cupcake connoisseurs – the community cupcake carousal was a great time for all and raised over $3000, benefiting TrICA (Treasure Valley Institute for Children’s Arts). Success never tasted so sweet!