The document summarizes the design work of Charlie Sommers, including rebranding an Italian pizza shop with a clean logo and folding paper plate, designing tokens for homeless transportation, promoting active lifestyles through an urban sports brand, collaborating on a class book addressing societal issues, creating awareness for wounded veterans, working within constraints on a fridge essay, developing a story around a vacuum cleaner puppet, designing a business for stress relief smashing, and creating unique coffee packaging that engages all five senses.

1. the portfolio of
CHARLIE SOMMERS

3. On the quest to match quality branding to
the delicious, quality pizza coming out of il
Panificio’s ovens in Sarasota, Fl, I found it
necessary to bring the logo into the 21st century
with a clean sans-serif typeface and red color
scheme. The pizza is served by the slice on
white paper plates, which was the perfect
opportunity for another branding element.
The solution was to come up with a single page
plate made from environmentally-friendly
recycled paper, printed with the new logo and
vibrant red color, that utilizes two simple folds
and a pinch tab to make a mess free eating
experience for all the suit and tie wearing
business people who stop in this downtown
pizza joint between important meetings.
il Panificio

5. After attending a guest lecture by Helen Rhymes, a social
services specialist for the city of St. Petersburg, our class
was divided into groups to come up with possible solutions
for helping with the issues faced by the prominent homeless
population in our area. My group and I focused on the
dilemma that Ms. Rhymes brought up that there are plenty
of resources available around the city for homeless people,
but transportation can be hard to come by. That’s where we
came up with Changing Our Gears, or C.O.G., a token based
system that provides one free bus ride per cog-shaped token
by partnering with the city transportation system. Charitable
citizens would purchase the cogs in select local markets and
could either donate them into collection boxes at the point of
purchase to be distributed at local shelters, or take the cogs
and distribute as the purchaser sees fit to any homeless
individuals in need that they encounter around town.
Changing Our Gears

7. As the majority of outdoor wear and athletic
clothing is geared towards escaping to the
wilderness, Vanguard was conceptualized
to be an urban sporting apparel brand that
advocates an active lifestyle through exploring
metropolitan areas. Through sponsoring
athletes of urban sports, Vanguard looks to
promote a healthy, active lifestyle for all city
dwelling individuals.
Vanguard

9. Quite possibly the biggest challenge faced by our entire class
of twenty, we were tested with the task of creating a cohesive
150+ page book that comments on the current state of society
in the United States of America. With twenty different designers
bringing their own unique ideas to the table, we had to solve
many disputes through compromise to combat the old saying
“too many cooks spoil the broth” and create a successful book
with harmonious content. To accomplish this, we agreed as a
class to create content that does not just talk about the issues
our society faces, but actually provides possible solutions to
many of these dilemmas.
Uhmerica

11. The Wounded Warrior Project is an
organization dedicated to raising
awareness and enlisting the public’s
aid for the needs of injured service
members and to provide unique, direct
programs and services for them. With
the tagline “The greatest casualty is
being forgotten”, I wanted to create a
mailer that could aid in their mission to
create awareness and provide support
for these veterans by providing a
takeaway with WWP’s 24-hour support
number. The business card size and
headphone wrapper design promote
keeping this information card accessible
in times of personal crisis.
Wounded
Warrior
Project

13. With the creative freedom to go in a myriad of seemingly
endless directions, it can be overwhelming trying to design
something novel. As one who loves to stand back and look at
the bigger picture, it was especially challenging to work step-
by-step through the multiple class assignments related to
the Decker puppet project throughout the course of the first
semester of my senior year without going ahead to see how
they were ultimately all connected. This 500+ word essay
was created as a response to this experience, as I wanted
to create my own constraints by working in the medium of
magnetic words on a fridge to display all of the text about the
realizations I came to about working in this way.
Constrained

15. This multi-media exploration started with the creation of a
puppet character, Decker, who is made entirely and solely
from one deconstructed portable vacuum. He stars in
several adaptations and pieces to his own story ranging from
photographic conceptual scenes, a digital 3-D modeling of
him, stop motion animation, a sketched animation variation,
and a title sequence all relating to Decker’s narrative.
Decker

17. The Break Room was a business idea I created to give customers
the opportunity to therapeutically smash objects to bits as a form
of stress-relief. A fully designed style guide backs the branding
through referencing logo usage, color scheme, outdoor advertising,
signage, uniforms, letterhead, and concept vehicle wraps.
The Break Room

19. In creating a coffee brand and developing
its packaging, originality and uniqueness
are key in standing out among the many
pre-existing java designs. With this,
the Caffiend package was designed to
appeal to all five senses of the self-
proclaimed coffee addict by finding
inspiration from the South American
rainstick, an instrument from where
the beans originate. As one grabs the
flat texture of the brown paper exterior
inspired by the unlabeled packaging of
other addictive substances hailing from
these regions of the world, an interior
coil forces the beans to tumble inside
as the package is held and turned,
producing a soothing sound reminiscent
of rain falling upon the leaves of coffee
plants. Wooed by the smell of coffee
beans radiating from the package,
customers get lost in the visual texture
of a classic optical illusion recreated
with the company’s bean logo shape. As
the packaging has tantalized four out of
five senses, customers cannot help but
yearn to satisfy the fifth by tasting a hot
cup of Caffiend coffee.
Caffiend

21. This publication attempts to provide subscribers with
unbiased content through displaying each side of social
topics in an equal manner allowing readers to formulate
their own opinions on the subject matters presented in each
magazine. Solving for ways to approach “unbiased design”
creates unique opportunities for ways to display information
across the different formats content will be published.
side x side