Cry Baby’s: 6 Years Later
In 2019, I was approached to create the identity for a new downtown Gainesville bar called Cry Baby’s. The first design constraint was also the most important: the logo had to work as a neon sign.
The loose script, looping composition, and palm-tree flourish were drawn with the physical qualities of neon in mind—the bends of the tubing, the spacing between forms, and the way the mark would glow after dark. What began as a sign became the bar’s signature, appearing across menus, bottles, matchbooks, packaging, merchandise, and throughout the space.
Six years later, Cry Baby’s returned for a refresh. The original logo had become part of the place, so replacing it was never the goal. Instead, the project expands its vocabulary through a family of wordmarks, devotional panels, and recurring symbols—preserving what made the identity recognizable while giving it more ways to behave.
The result is a visual language that can scream across windows, cry through menus, and lash out on merchandise.
Eat. Drink. Repent.
The expanded identity draws from tattoo flash, tropical ephemera, and devotional imagery, transforming indulgence into mythology. Halos crown burgers. Cocktails become sacred offerings. Crying faces, devils, dice, palms, flames, and skulls become recurring characters in a visual language that shifts effortlessly from coasters and swizzle sticks to matches, menus, shirts, and windows.
