12 Grain Studio, a company that specializes in web and print design, logos and branding, illustration and animation, will be setting up shop on Niagara Street in spring of 2015. That’s good news for Niagara Street because this creative company brings with it a couple of inspirational minds that can help to add a colorful splash to the street that it so desperately needs.
Already, co-owners Laura and Matt Duquette have made a mark on Niagara, well before their own arrival. Recently Matt painted a mural for neighboring business Buffalo Alternative Therapies (BAT – corner of Lafayette), which helped to take an extremely bland building and give it some character. The building sits at the same corner that I covered a couple weeks back, when attractive landscaping elements were incorporated into an otherwise vapid corner (see here).
The koi fish that Matt painted on the building represents “the feeling that one has after treatment (massage therapy, acupuncture, etc.) – floating, transcendent.” The mural was completed in collaboration with BAT and Abaca Press (located next door). The rest of the building is expected to be painted in coming days/weeks, with more of the same calming artistic imagery.
Come spring, 12 Grain Studio will find a permanent home on Niagara Street, next Sugar City and across the street from Resurgence Brewery. At that time, another “building in need” will have the good fortune of a creative design company as a tenant. I’m sure that the news bodes well for the unfortunate look of the exterior, as it exists in its current state of patchwork gallimaufry.