About
Designed to be looked at twice.
Calanque Studio is one designer. I work from San Diego with clients across the country, on brands that need to be right the first time.
The name.
A calanque is a sheltered cove of clear, deep water cut into white limestone cliffs along the Mediterranean. Calm on the surface, deep underneath, and not the kind of place you stumble onto by accident. You have to climb down to it.
That is the whole idea of the studio in one image. Depth under a calm surface, something clear and considered, a place that rewards the people who go looking.
The coastline in the mark is not a Mediterranean cove, though. It is La Jolla, about twenty minutes from my desk, drawn by hand and then traced into the logo. The metaphor came from the Mediterranean. The actual water is local.
How I work
Four things I hold to.
Clear before clever.
A brand that needs explaining is not finished. If a mark, a headline, or a page needs a second read to decode, I rewrite it rather than defend it.
I tell you what I actually think.
Including when the answer is that you do not need what you asked for. Telling someone the truth about their brand, gently and clearly, is most of the job.
You see the work as it happens.
No four week silence followed by a dramatic reveal. You see direction early, when changing it is still cheap.
You own everything at the end.
Files, fonts, source, accounts, all of it, in formats you can actually use. No hostage situations, no annual fee to keep your own logo.
Where I am, and where I work.
I am based in San Diego. Most of my clients are not, and it has never been a problem. The work happens over video calls, shared files, and written updates you can read on your own schedule instead of sitting through a meeting about them.
If you are local, I am glad to meet in person. If you are not, nothing about the process changes.