Apart from providing quality product and service, the underlying fuel for any successful business is design. Without a strong visual identity, it’s easy for an operation to fall through the cracks rather than be at the forefront of the competition.
Graphic designer Blaze Ben Brooks has a keen understanding of this. And his artistic flair is helping to style local businesses.
His portfolio includes the Silver Stamp, Carl’s Donuts, Lucid Juliet, Mothership Coffee, De La Lux Beauté and more. Heavily inspired by tattooing and vintage advertising, Brooks utilizes a trifecta of illustrator programs to create graphic illustrations with distressed details and interactive fonts that are often mistaken for analog media. These techniques make his work distinguishable from typical commercial branding and he’s being sought out now more than ever.
The Weekly sat down with Brooks at Bungalow Coffee, one of his most recent clients, to chat about his exposure to art, his time in Brooklyn and his hometown of Las Vegas finding its artistic stride.
Have you always been an artist or had an interest in art? Yeah, growing up my mom and dad owned a salon called Divas Studio and the environment my parents created was centered around counterculture. That whole thing bred a collection of people. Small subtleties like someone having pink hair and being exposed to ideas pushed me to want to create the world that I wanted to see.
So you’ve always known you were going to take your own path? Definitely. One of the key memories of the creative side of me growing up, was my parents having me in art camp. Kim Bavington, who’s a local, would run this program called Art Camp for Kids, which is still around today. She would pick an artist, show us one of their most famous works, and show us how to recreate it in our own way. So we were also getting a little bit of art history.
Your parents seemed to encourage your interest in art, including your dad bringing you how-to-draw books. That’s another one of my concrete memories. He’d sit down and draw with me two or three nights out of the week. There was a bit of a competitive streak, too. If his was better than mine, I’d be upset ... or even just having competition with myself. But that was my first time ever experiencing some form of technique and structure.
How did living in Brooklyn shape your art style? New York set the standard, at least in terms of quality, ideas, depth, personality and self expression. From the local businesses to the underground art scene, the spectrum is much wider than here. And I think being exposed to that spectrum allowed me to really just ask myself more when I’m creating and think things out a little bit further, just break out of that box. Once I started getting tattooed in Brooklyn, I remember being around artists that have a signature look to their tattoos, and not only wanting to be tattooed by them, but also studying them as an artist.
When it comes to the local businesses that you’ve worked with, how involved are they in the creative process? Smaller businesses come up with the concepts behind their culture. Walk into a place like, let’s say, Velveteen Rabbit—everything is Victorian, with old school furniture, and it’s dark, it’s moody. I’m always looking for a signature and staples within their brand that I can take and convert it into my own art style.
What are some of the challenges that come with working with small businesses? People get so set on adding like the Vegas skyline, or other unoriginal ideas and it’s that stubbornness or lack of openness that can be destructive. Vegas has the ... potential to look as good as New York and LA. It has all the assets, they’re just not being implemented.
We have the talent to reach that standard. Yeah, look at the Durango [Casino & Resort] opening and everything they’re doing marketing-wise, it’s gorgeous. I think some of those main players are from LA but it just shows that it’s coming anyways and you better be ready to be on that train or at least learn from it.
It’s a good thing you stuck around. Coming back from Brooklyn, it was either staying or going somewhere that’s gonna give the feeling that there’s creativity. I chose the former because I was born and raised here. I have the sense of pride and hope that says, hey, I can change this place. Not just by myself, but I think I can bring what I learned.
For more, visit blazebenbrooks.com.
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