Bay Area Made is a community of values-driven makers from around the Bay dedicated to virtues such as craft, quality, good design, innovation, and sustainability. In addition to building community amongst local makers, we’re dedicated to educating and inspiring consumers to support local companies who create quality products that are better for the user, the community, and the planet. From the clothes we wear to the food we eat, to the products we use daily, WHAT WE MAKE locally and HOW WE MAKE IT really does matter.
One of the ways we showcase our community is through our annual exhibition during SF Design Week. This year our exhibition was hosted by Gantri lighting in their beautiful San Francisco SOMA studio. “Bay Area Made: Product Design Stories” featured products from 37 Bay Area Made members, and the stories behind them. The products represented standard, custom, and customized offerings from established and up-and-coming brands spanning home & garden, clothing & accessories, food & beverage, and body & bath, providing a behind the scenes glimpse into who creates the products, and how and why they are made.
In this series we’re featuring select exhibitors and their stories. Here is the fourth installment.
Check out Part 1 , Part 2 & Part 3 of Product Design Stories.
St. George Spirits
Trio of St. George Gins. Non-GMO corn neutral spirit + botanicals with offset printed labels in Estate 8 paper by Fasson. 2011 for Botanivore & Terroir, 2024 for Valley.
These three St. George labels speak to the stories and people behind each of these gins. They reflect both a sense of humor and commitment to the craft of distillation and are the artfully printed invitation to the party inside the bottles.
The starting point for the label design was our love for paper ephemera, such as stock certificates and paper currency. These ephemera convey longevity and legacy, and a formality and seriousness that serve as a foil for cheekiness and play in the form of fantastical motifs and Easter eggs.
We released St. George Terroir and Botanivore Gins in 2011. Terroir Gin was inspired by the California landscape: The illustration of the bear with Mt. Tamalpais in the distance reflects that sense of place. The bear is a well-known symbol of our state and its wilderness, while the surrounding trees are Douglas fir, a key ingredient in this landscape-driven gin. The bear sports a cowbell, a nod to the monkey gleefully playing a cowbell on the St. George Absinthe Verte label (not included in this exhibit).
With the Botanivore label, the story continues with a martini coupe inside a bear trap. The cocktail entices the bear towards the trap. The label also incorporates an Easter egg in the form of an acronym (IDTSOOT) used by our production team when a spirit is deemed truly worthy. Come by the distillery sometime and ask us about it!
Our new Valley Gin, just released this summer, evokes the heady aroma of a citrus grove in bloom. It was inspired by a spring day at Lindcove Ranch, the Central Valley family farm that’s been our longtime source of citrus fruit. The label echoes the structure of the Terroir and Botanivore labels but incorporates more color and imagery that ranges across the entire label. It features a grove of martini coupes beneath a blossoming orange tree and an orange with a bear trap for a mouth – the distillers devouring fresh citrus. The label also includes a memorial for the late John Kirkpatrick, who was the patriarch of Lindcove.
Each label tells a story about the gin inside, and taken together, the stories weave together to form a magical world.
Art direction was led by St. George master distiller Lance Winters, illustrations were by Steven Noble and Justin Adcock, and label design and layout were by Juli Shore Design and Mattingly Design.
– Lance Winters, Master Distiller
MANU Ceramics
“Faith is a Migratory Bird”. Stoneware, Ceramic Glaze. 2024
My work is about quiet transmutations. Surrounded by an outwardly gazing culture of endless commodities guaranteeing fulfillment, I work to turn my attention towards my immediate, everyday life; to go deeper into relationship – with friends, with place, with objects, with materials – rather than skitter across the surface of a million empty promises.
It was not until I had a child that I made this transition. Early motherhood was filled with constraints, limitations, frustration, boredom, repetition. The experience was one of pushing through to a deep appreciation for the quotidian. I became profoundly interested in the objects that attend our everyday lives and our relationships to them – how functionality and daily use can imbue objects with a living spirit, and, in turn, enrich our lives with deep meaning and beauty.
“Faith is a Migratory Bird” represents an attempt to integrate years of repetitive production work with years of personal, internal work – both as loving offerings to a more caring future.
– Niki Shelley, Owner
CRAVE
Tease Ring. Stainless Steel, Silicone. 2024
“Industrial design has allowed me to create the world I want to see. When I started my career more than 20 years ago, I used to think form follows function, but now I believe we need more products with forms that follow both function and emotion. Emotional products can touch people’s hearts and allow them to experience something deeper.
With pleasure jewelry, while there’s an immediate aesthetic appreciation that creates intrigue and desire, it is also an adornment that enables the wearer to feel empowered. At the same time, it can also be a quiet object of pleasure that sits unapologetically on a nightstand. Emotional connection exists on multiple levels if you consider the audience you are designing for. To be frank, I design products and experiences for the female gaze and for people who desire beautiful products for their pleasure. Call me a feminist industrial designer, the world needs more of us.”
– Ti Chang, Co-Founder/Designer
Ti Chang is an award-winning industrial designer, artist, and activist whose pioneering work in pleasure products has elevated a new definition of luxury in intimacy products. She is the co-founder of CRAVE and the creator of pleasure jewelry, adornments that inspire sensual empowerment and cultural conversations. She is best known for the design of the Vesper vibrator necklace in 2014, one of the most celebrated and iconic pleasure products, as seen on A-list celebrities and fierce individuals. Ti’s design vision has won international design awards and has led CRAVE to mainstream partnerships with the likes of Nordstrom, Goop, Ulta Beauty, including a collaboration with Saint Laurent. Ti is a classically trained industrial designer with an M.A. in Design Products from the Royal College of Art in London and a B.S. in Industrial Design from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Since 2010, CRAVE has created elevated pleasure products for life’s most intimate moments. CRAVE is a pleasure house renowned for its iconic pleasure jewelry and bedside products. Our sought-after products are known for their distinct aesthetic, rigorous engineering, patented innovations, and premium materials. With a commitment to quality and craftsmanship, our world-class women-led design team oversees every step of the manufacturing process from our global supply chain to final quality control in our San Francisco micro-factory. As a team, we share our passion for the pursuit of beauty; every detailed decision—color, material, and finish—is made to honor your experience. We create products of exceptional quality because we believe your pleasure is a worthy effort.
HELIOTROPE SF
All-natural skincare & body care. No synthetic perfumes or artificial colors. Fragrance-free items can be customized with any essential oils. 2000-2023
Heliotrope’s origin story begins with our founder, JP, in search of a fragrance-free shower gel back in 2009. At the time, it wasn’t so easy to find products without perfumes or colorants added. So he contacted a few chemists – with whom he’d worked years before at Bare Escentuals – and within six months, Heliotrope offered about two dozen products and we opened our first shop on Church Street in sleepy Noe Valley.
Our original intention was to offer high-quality fragrance-free products for those consumers who wanted to reduce their chemical footprint, as well as those with sensitivities to perfumes (“fragrance” or “parfum” on other company’s ingredient lists). In addition, we felt it was important to serve the customers who do like scent – and for them, we offer 36 Essential Oils & Blends, which can be used to customize any liquid or cream. Early on, we had two sustainability initiatives: first was to produce all our products locally – using as much Bay Area materials & labor as possible. Many ingredients only come from one part of the world (i.e., Shea Butter only grows in Western Africa), but 100% of our production takes place in the East Bay and in Sonoma County.
Second, we offered discount refills for as many of our products as we could, right from the beginning. We still do refills on about 90% of our products (everything except candles & soaps), asking clients to bring in their empties, and offering at least 10% of the full price. In addition, we offer larger sizes for people to do their own refills at home (gallons, 1/2 gallons, etc.).
Third, we offer as much as we can in glass (excluding items meant for the shower, where plastic is a safer option). To minimize our inventory of plastics, we use the same bottles across our product lines, so that they can be used interchangeably as needed, reducing waste.
An additional benefit of going fragrance free is that our line is naturally “gender neutral” – since the only difference between “women’s” and “men’s” skincare is the way they smell, we’ve eliminated that variable. Using simple, natural imagery in our branding reinforces this to our customers, who have a higher percentage of male-identified users than other skincare brands.
– Jonathan Plotzker-Kelly, Founder
Photos by Medium Small
View the St. George Spirits profile
View the MANU Ceramics profile
View the CRAVE profile
View the HELIOTROPE SF profile
