Corey Moraes is a respected West Coast Tsimshian artist with work on display across North America. He has received many awards and grants, most recently the 2010 Aboriginal Traditional Visual Art Award from the Canada Council for the Arts. While Corey is well-established as a fine artist, he wanted Detail to help him explore new markets and a younger demographic — particularly Aboriginal youth. Detail was tasked to design him a fresh new identity to reach this audience.
Detail set about to merge Corey’s Tsimshian style with some of the influences of Japanese tattooing. We understood that the marriage of these two styles gave us a hip-hop inspired identity that was bold, striking and unique. We included within the initial concepts elements of bikers and tattoos; skulls, flames, smoke and typography with an attitude. For some of the concepts, a heavy influence of the Japanese tattoo artists such as Hokusai & Horimouja were used.
The chosen concept was the raven skull and Japanese inspired smoke trails. We took it a step further and incorporated Haida wings rendered by Corey as a third graphic element to his brand. The chosen type face was rich in black letter and gothic influences, an ideal choice for Corey’s identity.
The finished business cards are just the tip of the iceberg. Detail is now developing hats, t-shirts, stickers as well as large format promotional materials such as vehicle vinyl graphics for Corey Moraes. Detail is committed to Corey’s cause of making his art cool to a whole new market yet maintaining his fine art roots.
Detail is currently planning an integrated campaign that includes web development and media communications. www.coreymoraes.com
