BOTTOM FEEDER: ABOUT
BOTTOM FEEDER
is a bi-coastal design studio with outposts in Santa Monica,
California and Biddeford, Maine. Founded in 2001 at 75 mph rolling northbound
on The 5 by two chicks in advertising playing hookey to go snowboarding,
the company was almost entirely inspired by a Sheryl Crow lyric1 blasting
through the dashboard.
The somewhat questionable strategy of having a name before a business and
a business before a business plan allowed the adventure to evolve organically
from there. And ultimately positioned the operation with a uniquely flexible
mindset uninhibited by conventional MBA wisdom.
Initially making their mark directing a slate of surf and snowboarding videos
while moonlighting at their real jobs, the girls eventually set up shop
in an old Venice firehouse. Guided by a core philosophy that “the more fun
it is to work on, the more likely the end-product will kick ass”, projects
were cherry-picked accordingly and the creative atmosphere kept loose and
open to experimentation and collaboration. Seven years later, the game theory
remains the same.
Part design studio, part art consortium, part film production house and
part aspiring t-shirt empire, Bottom Feeder operates at the crossroads of
logo and identity design / book, poster and packaging design / motion graphics,
animation and title design / web design / commercial, music video, film
and documentary production / advertising design and copywriting / t-shirt
design and screenprinting / and various fine art media.
Aside from a few unmitigated trainwrecks associated with being inadvertently
sucked into the t-shirt business, the pitfalls of winging-it have generally
been more than eclipsed by the harebrained ideas that panned out. It's all
about batting for average.
1 Sheryl Crow, “A Change Would Do You Good,” Sheryl Crow, 1996.
