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Your message needn't be sacred text to be meaningful, nor engraved in stone to be noticed.

what is a cartouche?

Ramses II cartoucheThe most familiar example is the oblong of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics naming a ruler or deity. In architecture, it is an ornamental frame providing space for an inscription or a coat of arms. The term can also refer to a scrolling frame (around an illustration, for instance) or to a decorative emblem on a map with information about the publisher.

(photo of Ramses II cartouche courtesy of Mike Carlson)

Kartouche is a graphic design and wordsmithing studio specializing in publications and branding since 1997.

Our clients range from local entrepreneurs and artists to international corporations, including commercial, civic and non-profit organizations. We've even had a hand in the start-up of a few periodicals.

We're professionals. When you work with Kartouche, you get the talents of an entire agency staff — delivered with singular personal attention:

  • a creative director who interprets the client's requirements, initiating ideas and proposing treatments
  • an art director who expresses concepts visually
  • a copywriter who develops and hones text
  • a designer who pulls graphics and words together
  • a project manager who keeps the process on track and on budget

We're pragmatic, too. Edison’s success in creating the light bulb was not in being the first one to conceive the idea, but rather in being the first person to resolve many of the practical issues involved with engineering the idea. Your message, product or service; your individual and organizational personality; your audience or market; your time frame; your budget — all of these are factors we consider.

After all, your project isn't about us. Sure, we want to look good. But we do that by making you look good.

tea cupThe reality of the teacup is not the teacup itself,
but the space within the teacup.

– Lao Tze, Chinese philosopher

For Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture wasn't about the buildings themselves, it was about creating spaces to live and work in. It was about the search for truth, beauty and the perfect union of form and function.

Inspired by nature, he thought about building design in almost biological terms. A building was a product of its place and its time, intimately connected to a particular moment and site, never the result of an imposed style.

Like Wright's organic architecture, Kartouche's design starts with the fundamental idea, and the project develops and grows — sometimes in unexpected ways — out of that kernel, shaped by needs, limitations and resources. The important part is not the piece itself, but rather the message which it ultimately conveys.

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