We know what you want. 

The backstory.

My history with East Side Pies goes back to my first year of marriage. In 2012, as a young chef in Austin, I had put myself through a circuit of fancy artisan farm to table restaurants in order to prove myself as a professional. Each one of these establishments were replete with passion but founded in anger, pressure and stress. I needed a short break from that world and had heard about this great pizza shop where other misfit chefs had fled to temporarily relieve themselves of the troubles that came with the booming local Austin restaurant scene.

My first year of marriage coincided with my first year of employment at East Side Pies and it was wonderful. The staff was made up of creative people who made art, music and clothing and they couldn't care less about what anyone thought of them. In that first year I made more art and was more creative by proxy. I was content! But curiosity for the unknown coerced us into making a move to Colorful Colorado where I continued the pursuit of "Executive Chefdom". After a year in that kitchen I had made friends for life with many of my pizza comrades, little did I know that my story with East Side Pies was far from a conclusion.

After 5 years in the Colorado culinary scene I realized that overall, it wasn't nearly as creative of a career as I once thought. I realized that putting myself in the position to be creative every single day should be my new life goal. I returned to Austin in an attempt to live closer to family and quickly decided to pursue a rapidly expanding passion in design through the Visual Communications program at Austin Community College. I returned to East Side Pies and the kitchen hours allowed me to focus on my courses. Soon enough, we'd all be facing a global pandemic which came packed with unique challenges and great opportunities.

The lockdown forced East Side Pies to close their lobbies and switch to a walk-up window setup. New and regular customers needed wayfinding signage and revised menus with QR codes and COVID policies. A designer was needed quickly and I jumped at the opportunity.

Cutting to present day, I find myself a recent graduate of ACC and the current Visual Designer and Social Media Manager for East Side Pies. I have been in the position offically for a year now and it has challenged me to design something unique, cohesive and relevant almost daily. This position has been design bootcamp for me and I have enjoyed every second of it.

Please feel free to look through some of my favorite pieces from this project, including Facebook posts, Instagram posts and stories, Tweets and anything else the company felt was needed to get the brand's story out there to the Austin public. For a full view of the entire scope of work, please visit the East Side Pies Instagram page!

 The Process.

 This project was unique in that I had established full confidence and trust from the stakeholders and was given free reign to create content at my own pace and in my own style. This presented its own set of challenges as my main priority was to establish continuity within the social outreach and cohesion throughout the design. To solve this, I successfully established a posting schedule that I adhered to strictly throughout the project, I also made sure to create a wide variety of content including product photos, custom graphics, interactive stories, follower contests and many other deliverables designed to deliver a higher level of engagement on the company website and various social media outlets. This early ideation and goal setting resulted in an extremely diverse and fun brand identity that increased engagement and follower count significantly. Like the City of Austin itself, some of the best work was downright weird.