Visionary
- Mark McWaters
- Fred Lopez
- Will Blaine
Winter Garden boasts beauty at every corner. Locals and visitors alike can’t help but feel inspired by its blend of old and new, color and texture, culture and commerce that seems to come naturally here. But look closer. Our city isn’t naturally occurring. It’s intentionally built, curated and cultivated, not just as a collection of buildings, but as a brand.
The city works tirelessly to strengthen and preserve the brand it has carefully crafted. Every restoration is performed with painstaking historical accuracy. Every event is tweaked and retooled until it’s just right. Every expansion and addition is scrutinized down to the smallest detail to ensure it aligns perfectly with the brand.
Everything you see is beautiful by design. And we have artists to thank for that—though not the artists you normally think of.
“Go to the Farmer’s Market any weekend and just listen to people. They get so animated about Winter Garden. They have such pride, such an ego about this city,” says one such artist, Joe Alarie, whose advertising design business in its modest building at the edge of downtown has been a cornerstone of Winter Garden’s identity since 1996.
It’s no secret that our city is home to a vibrant arts scene. What is less obvious is its equally thriving graphic arts scene, one that’s not so much “underground” as it is “under the radar”; you may not know the artists’ names, but you do know their work. Joe and his team at Alarie Design, for example, are behind much of the city’s communications and campaigns, including its recently unveiled 120th anniversary logo.
“There is a general excitement that comes from being a local,” says Will Blaine, cofounder of another monolith of city culture, AB Newton and Company. Will is the creator of much of the art for sale here, including his iconic city prints. “I like celebrating the good things about all these communities.”
The Local sat down with Will and Joe to learn about where they came from, and how their work as graphic artists shapes the Winter Garden we know today.
SEES THE BIG PICTURE
Joe’s not a big fan of labels. He eschews the terms “artist” or “designer” or “art director” when he describes his career. But a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, and as the owner and namesake of Alarie Design, he is all those things and more.
But, like many creative greats, Joe was lost before his passion found him. When he was starting out in Atlanta, making the rounds in the big buildings downtown, his answer to the often-asked “What do you want to do?” was a painfully honest, “I don’t know.”
That all changed in 1986, when he saw a recruitment ad from CNN. “It said: ‘We need the tightest marker comps in town.’” Joe answered the ad, “and CNN picked me up.”
He landed at Ted Turner’s outdoor company, creating billboards under the creative direction of the man who would become his mentor—Fred Adams. “Fred was a tough, no-nonsense drill instructor of a boss, and I never learned so much, so fast, in all my life,” he recalls. “We created outdoor advertising—billboards—and the constraints built into that medium: a minimum of words, a strong image, and that fast, clear communication. Outdoor is a discipline. I learned that when it’s good, it’s really, really good. But when it’s bad, it’s awful. That rubbed off on me and I loved it. Outdoor is a medium where you get hungry for a home run.”
When the outdoor business became a frenzy of consolidating, buyouts, and burnouts, Joe split off from Turner with several of the people there and relocated to Orlando. “Ten of us all played that same game and ended up buying like 30 companies,” he says. “At that time, Universal was going nuts with their billboards. ET with the wand, Doc Brown with the fiber optics. We had to step up our game, raise the bar creatively. We pitched a five-poster billboard campaign and sold it. We won a bunch of awards for it and we were off.”
Through all of it, Joe’s love of strong, clear, simple messaging never left him.
When his chance came for him to finally open his own place, he took it, and Alarie Design was born in just the right place at just the right time. “We were here before Winter Garden became ‘Winter Garden,’” he says. “We got to evolve with the city. We watched as the leaders unfolded their vision. They had such patience. They kept to their standards. They had the discipline to pull it off. And we picked up on that.”
As such, Alarie Design had an important hand in crafting the image of Winter Garden we know and love today. A few landmark projects stand out in his mind. “We did one of the early redesigns of the Winter Garden logo. They put it on all their trash cans,” Joe recalls. “We pitched an idea for an art show to run before the Music Festival, built 11 guitars, and invited artists to decorate them. We also created a YouTube video campaign for Fresh Express.”
Despite the national accolades, Joe considers his local work to be his most important work. “Working to help craft the Winter Garden brand has been a privilege for us. It’s an honor to work with them.”
And the best is yet to come. It’s only been a few years since Joe’s son, Joey, joined the family business as Project Manager—despite Joe’s attempts to discourage him from throwing in his lot with the sometimes-thankless, always-demanding field of graphic art. “I gave him the crappy jobs no one wanted to do, but he just kept coming!” Joe recalls. “He’s a lot tougher than I am. And he gives us a unique perspective on newer web technologies and social media. He makes me
look good.”
We asked Joe if he had a “dream project” he had yet to do. “Really, we get to work on our dream projects every day. Creating, building, presenting to a client—it never gets old. And I’m not done yet.”
“Working to help craft the Winter Garden brand has been a privilege for us. It’s an honor to work with them.”
SELECTED WORKS
Look familiar? It should. From signage to logos, posters to paid media campaigns, the work of Alarie Design colors nearly corner of Winter Garden. “We got to evolve with the city. We watched as the leaders unfolded their vision. They had such patience. They kept to their standards. They had the discipline to pull it off. And we picked up on that.”
PAINTS THE TOWN
You could almost say that Will was destined to be a Winter Garden artist. His family roots run deep—both with his grandfather, who owned a longstanding dry goods store in the heart of downtown, and with his father, who was a brilliant creator in his own right. “My father is a quite successful artist. He went off to study art in Paris and is a fine artist by every definition,” says Will.
He recalls growing up sharing his father’s passion, but not his vision. “I knew art would be my thing, but I also knew I couldn’t hope to compete in his ‘fine art’ world,” he says. “I had no idea what my niche would be until I stumbled onto graphic art.”
As it happens, Will had another, quite different calling initially. “I went to seminary, mainly to get my theological roots for my art. I’m not one to force things, but the day came that I looked up and found myself in the ministry! I served as pastor for many years and absolutely loved the ministry. I retired five or six years ago, but I still keep my hand in at my local church. I love ministry and art, and I’ve been blessed to practice both.”
Will’s creative dreams started becoming reality in 2014, when he and fellow Winter Garden-native-creative Andy Crabtree cofounded A.B. Newton and Company, named after Winter Garden’s first mayor and the unofficial patron saint of our community spirit. “There’s a lot we don’t really know about Mr. Newton’s life,” the company’s website explains, “but what we do know is how much we love the sense of community he established.”
“We started off with t-shirts,” says Will of the first days of their business. But it was in 2016, when Matt Peacock came on as a partner and the trio expanded their repertoire, that their products began to really take off.
You can see Will’s art on a long list of A.B. Newton merch—apparel, soaps and colognes, home decor, artisan wood signs, candles, and more. But by far the most visible examples of Will’s art are his wildly popular stylized area maps.
He started, as always, with his hometown. With a playful hand, bright colors, and simple shapes, Will drew a map of Winter Garden that is both stunningly simple and dizzyingly intricate. He dug deep into local culture, packing the page with a Where’s Waldo? assortment of winks and nods.
“People like our city prints precisely because they are so detailed and so localized,” he says. “We put locations, landmarks, coffee shops, restaurants, things only locals would know about on them and that is part of the fun. ‘How did you know about that!’ I get asked that all the time.”
Since his Winter Garden print first went up for sale in 2018, he has applied this attention to detail to nearly three dozen locales, from nearby Orlando and Mount Dora to far-off Nashville, Atlanta, Baltimore—the list keeps growing. “We met a girl at the Farmer’s Market who asked if we could do a print for Milwaukee. She was so excited about it and so animated,” Will says. “I started to research Milwaukee and really got into it, doing the due diligence. Talking with locals for those neat, out-of-way secrets. The map came out great and she loved it.”
Will is quick to share the spotlight, though. “When people read this I don’t want them thinking it’s all me because it is not. We’re all equal partners. Andy is a hugely gifted designer and can do everything. One day he bought a laser and starting creating all sorts of amazing signs. He creates the Winter Garden Christmas ornaments every year. My daughter makes our candles. We have a great team that makes us all look good.”
But even as Will turns his pen to cities across the country, his heart and his pride remain firmly rooted in the Garden. “There is a certain camaraderie about one’s hometown and sharing it with someone else—especially when your hometown is Winter Garden.”
“There is a certain camaraderie about one’s hometown and sharing it with someone else—especially when your hometown is Winter Garden.”
SELECTED WORKS
You can’t miss A.B. Newton and Company’s signature style when you see it. Filled with whimsy, Will Blaine, Andrew Crabtree, and Matthew Peacock’s colorful, hand-drawn illustrations showcase nearly three dozen locales and decorate several marketing campaigns, posters and books.
While Joe Alarie and Will Blaine have done much to help elevate the visual brand behind Winter Garden, they are far from the only players in town. Marc Jablon of Imagine Marketing is the visionary behind the event swag you love to collect, as well as the social and multi-media marketing you like and follow all day, every day. Chris Chan is the visionary behind Think Minion,who’s drone footage, video, photography, 3D tours, and animations populate your favorite feeds and commericials. And the Horizon West Happenings team is making their mark cultivating the Horizon West brand on that side
of town.
And, of course, there’s EM Agency. We’re not usually the type to butt into our own article, but we can’t do a whole piece on graphic art in the local area without talking about The Local.
Tucked behind the Winter Garden Branch of the Orange County Library, there is a team of creatives working tirelessly on each page of the magazine you now hold in your hands. But it’s only one of our works of art. EM is an advertising agency with a list of clients that stretches from across the street to across the country. While building brands is our bread and butter, making The Local is our contribution to this community. Something crafted with care because this is our home, too.
Compared to the more visible fine arts, where each creation is tied directly to its creator, graphic arts often go unnoticed, and the people behind them unappreciated. But graphic art isn’t meant to be noticed, it’s meant to be felt. Because those designs aren’t made to reflect the artist, they are made to embody a client’s attributes. Whether that client is a company, a product or even a city.
So next time you look around at this wonderful town, notice it all. The nature, the community, the art you see, the art you don’t—Winter Garden is the sum of all its parts. And that is by design.
Our city isn’t naturally occurring. It’s intentionally built, curated and cultivated, not just as a collection of buildings, but as a brand… Winter Garden is the sum of all its parts. And that is by design.
