Lore

FAB Workshop

I’d heard Randi Weinstein’s name for years before I met her in person. I knew she’d been involved with the Charleston Wine + Food Festival and Butcher & Bee. I also knew she was from New York and since I’m from New Jersey, I kind of knew she was my people.

My friend Sara Clow, General Manager of GrowFood Carolina, officially connected us. When we met for coffee, Randi told me about her vision to create an event for women in hospitality. The event was a place where women in hospitality could come together to learn about the business of hospitality, to talk about the great things – and the hard things – about being a woman in the industry, to network with women they might otherwise not have the opportunity to connect with, to share stories, and ultimately empower one another to be ever more awesome and to use one of Randi’s favorite words: “badass.” If you know me at all, you know I was in.

Robert and I dove in, and over the past several months, our amazing team put together a plan to help Randi make this incredible vision of hers real. More specifically, we helped name the event, create an identity, craft a storyline, develop a website, and create a plan to publicize it across all media.

Here’s a quick, behind the scenes look at the process:

Brand Direction
To ensure we were going down the right creative path, we pulled together an array of design examples and grouped them into three distinct paths for Randi’s review. Those paths were:

  • Traditional / classic.
  • Progressive / elegant.
  • Edgy / informal.

Spoiler alert: Edgy won. *See badass above.

Naming
Robert likes to say that while naming is fun, it’s also sort of impossible, like trying to name someone’s child for them. Here are just a few of the many names we developed.

lemonmilk
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Ultimately, Randi chose one of the early names she came up with. Introducing FAB, an acronym for Females and Business, but also, a laundry list of awesome things, like…

  • Food and beverage
  • Front and back
  • Farmer and butcher
  • Fine and brandy
  • Feast and booze
  • Fricassee and broil
  • Forage and brine
  • Fry and buffet
  • Full and belly

Identity
With the name nailed down, we jumped into the logo and identity process. Tyler and Nic came up with some pretty tight pencil sketches:

pencil sketches screen-shot-2016-11-15-at-3-58-39-pm

 

And then these more fully realized ideas…

FAB identity options

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Until Randi picked her winner:

FAB final logo

 

Here’s what that looks like as a business card:

FAB biz card fab-business-cards-02

 

Website Wireframe
Because the FAB site is relatively small, we had a good handle on the content we wanted to highlight. Nic sketched out this gem during a meeting.

wireframe sketch

 

Website
I got to work crafting copy while Randi got to work securing headshots and bios for her speakers, moderators, and panelists. It was a massive team effort, and I’m so proud to share the site with you.

Share & Tell
While the FAB Workshop doesn’t happen until June 11 – 13, 2017, tickets go on sale in January, so sign up for details. And, there are about 9,000 amazing stories to tell both about the conference, about Randi, and the amazing women who are part of it, and we’re thrilled to help share those stories with the world. Today, Hanna Raskin of the Post & Courier, published this fantastic article.

Of course, none of this would be possible with Randi and her vision to help women empower other women. Thank you for letting us be part of FAB! We can’t wait. Follow FAB on Instagram and Facebook.