A Chronicles rebrand for 2025
I’m excited to introduce a new brand for the Zuiker Chronicles:
The background
For many decades, my grandfather, Francis C. Zuiker, mailed his typewritten travel essays, which he called The Zuiker Chronicles, to his sons and daughters (and eventually his grandchildren). My father, aunts, and uncles followed with their own Zuiker Chronicles letters.
When I was in college and learning desktop publishing and newspaper layout with Aldus PageMaker on early Apple Macintosh computers, I designed an Anton Edition of the chronicles. Later, Erin and I sent our news from Vanuatu—Frank loved that I was a Peace Corps Volunteer just like my father and an adventure writer like himself.
We returned to the United States as the dotcom bubble was about to burst, but I dove into the web and created a website at zuikerchronicles.com (and zuiker.com) as a tribute to Frank the Beachcomber and to serve as a website community for the extended Zuiker family. Lots of other sites and social media tools made it hard to keep the family active on this website, but since those first days in July 2000, I have written a personal blog first at zuiker.com, then at mistersugar.com, and then again back here.
The first design for the Zuiker Chronicles website used an illustration of aspen trees that referenced the family campground in Wisconsin, which we called Raven’s Roost. From 2005 to 2015, I used a design featuring a raven and a font reminiscent of a vintage typewriter. The mistersugar brand, introduced in 2024, was based on a carved wooden pig that we brought back from Vanuatu.
Time for a new brand
I’ve wanted a new logo for the Zuiker Chronicles for years. As part of my vivid vision, I finally made it happen. At last summer’s Zuiker Family Reunion, two of my cousins got a Zuiker tattoo on their backs—they wanted to honor our grandfather, we found his signature at the bottom of one of his chronicles, and the tattoo artist in Breckenridge arfully recreated it on their skin. Jenny and Kathy almost got me to get the same the next day. I still might.
Home in North Carolina, a state from which many of Frank’s chronicles were written, I went looking for a local designer. But the community on Micro.blog connected me to Ning Kantida, a Thailand-based artist who likes to create letter designs. Ning was eager to help me create a new brand.
Turning to the turtle
For this update, I told Ning, I wanted to replace the raven with an Eastern box turtle to honor the land I live on in and to reflect my passion for recording the turtles I see on my walks in the woods—and to give a nod to my slow writing style. (See my turtle photos here. Uncle Larry sent me photos of tortoises he’d come upon while hiking in the West.)
I’ve written about sea turtles, too, and I have a carved wooden turtle bowl from Vanuatu. Once I shared a photo of that with Ning, we pivoted to using that to inform the logo.
So, we had grandpa’s signature and the sea turtle form. My last request was to have a element about writing: the previous brand referenced the typewriter, but I am constantly writing notes with a pen or pencil.
A professional
Throughout January, Ning methodically and artistically created the layers of the brand, with each emailed update wowing me with thought and detail. In my design brief, I had listed expected deliverables and I got what I hoped for, including the wordmark and logomark, color scheme and typography guide, and favicons.
Importantly, I also got a great partner for this project. I am delighted by the result. Thank you, Ning!
Next steps
I’ve already begun to code an updated Zuiker Chronicles. I hope to launch the new design in a few weeks. I’ll write up an explanation for that, too.
And, stickers.
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