When I started at Sunflower Market in early 2007,
they had four stores and a Sunflower logo already
established the previous year when the first four stores opened.

Original Logo

Glenn Backus, who was brought in to reposition Sunflower,
wanted a much less "corporate look." He wanted Sunflower
to convey a passion for great food, and do it with a sense of fun;



One of my first projects was redesigning their monthly grocery ad.
It was a standard newspaper insert size called "Good Natured News." See the "Before"

The new monthly mailer became a reader-friendly 8-pages,
conveying our passion for food with illustrations and witty copy throughout.

It was called "The Tasting Panel Report."
(The name was later changed to simply The Tasting Report.
Apparently, a winery somewhere had already taken the Tasting Panel name
for their newsletter, so we had to change ours.)
The Tasting Panel Tasting Report Sample Issues




Glenn also wanted a different look for the grocery items themselves.
No more stock photography for Sunflower! No siree!

There were 30-40 different items featured every month.

I developed a system using line art and watercolor pencils
to give all the different items a consistant look,
and still meet that monthly deadline.

( A system I could teach to our new intern! )



A new Sunflower Market store was scheduled to open in Dublin, Ohio
by June of 2007. It had been in the works long before the redesign.

It seemed a perfect time to make the changes,
and have the "new look" in place for the Grand Opening.




The Sunflower philosophy was displayed on huge signs around the store
playfully telling customers what we were all about.



The graphic look extended to the business cards and store tags.




Newspaper was a good vehicle for Sunflower, and we had lots of
full color ads in all three markets.

This is called an "ROP", which means "Run Of Press."
That means it is printed with the rest of the newspaper.



In each Sunflower city, there were different newspapers, so each ad
was formatted and re-sized to fit that particular venue.



Toward the end of 2007, we put out a blitz of special inserts to go out
with the weekly Big Food Section. ( Sunday in Chicago & Indianapolis, Thursday in Ohio. )



These were offset-printed and shipped to the respective newspapers
to be inserted in the ad bundles.

( You're just learning all kinds of grocery lingo, aren't cha? )


The Sunflower stores were very involved in their local communities.
Each store manager hosted special events, depending on season and opportunity.



Each market is represented by an event above.
All of the stores participated in the sunflower growing contest.

( I have a feeling that's one event that the kids
and parents will miss when September rolls around. I miss it already.
Those little seed packets were one of my sweetest projects.)



The Sunflower Gang Sunflower's New Look Sunflower Signage Sunflower's Private Label Sunflower Illustrations

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