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Texas Bullion Series Design

Texas Precious Metals engaged Espresso to design the new line of products coinciding with the launch of the Texas Mint. Our client requested that we explore themes and symbols of Texas but avoid being too cliche. We started our design process by creating two large mood boards, one with representative images and icons of Texas and the other with coin designs from various countries and governments.

Our first round of designs included several icons in mash up style, but we were’t comfortable with the fragmentation of ideas and determined we needed an underlying theme to run throughout all of the designs. We landed on the Texas State Capitol building as our anchor element, and we were excited about the various features from the regal and iconic building that we could use to create the series.

When exploring various features of the Capitol grounds, we identified several beautiful statues with very interesting stories.  Our favorite, and the most representative of the attitude we wanted to portray, was the Texas Cowboy Monument sculpted by Constance Whitney Warren in the early 1900s. The statue depicts a cowboy with his hat raised to the sky riding a bucking horse. The statue was created to capture the “rough and romantic riders of the range.” He became the feature of our Texas Silver round and our purposeful photography angle made him seem larger than life. The cowboy was backed by the exterior of the Capitol dome and in the foreground, we placed the iconic bluebonnet reaching to the sun.

For the Texas Gold Round, we chose to highlight the Capitol building itself, allowing the towering dome to dominate the design. We visited the Capitol in Austin, Texas, and took multiple low angle shots from different sides of the building attempting to find the most interesting view of the architecture.  We didn’t want to mimic the typical flat side profile depiction of the government buildings often depicted on coins, but rather we desired to capture the building’s essence in a three-dimensional way. We identified one of our photos that captured the angle we were looking for while also including the beautiful arch entry, and we used this image to create the simple yet powerful design of the Texas Gold Round.

After completing the designs of the Texas Silver and Gold Rounds, we started working within a new rectangular space for the Texas Silver Bars. We tried multiple images of the Capitol building as well as large bluebonnets, but none of these concepts seemed to be “it.” While in a meeting with our client, we were reminiscing about our childhood memories of standing in the rotunda and looking straight up into the massive interior dome of the building. This conversation sparked the concept of recreating that experience through the artwork on the bars. We digitally created an exact replica of the inside design of the dome — this was the most abstract and modern design choice we made throughout the design stages of the product line, but we loved the end result. To many, it looks like a beautiful government seal of some sort, but to those who have visited the Capitol, the recognizable architecture will connect on an entirely different level.

Overall the design process was unlike any other project we have done. We learned a lot about the minting process and even some Texas history along the way. In the end, we managed to stamp the spirit of Texas into the Texas Mint’s gold and silver bullion products that will be sold across the world for both Texans and non-Texans to treasure.

Texas Precious Metals is preparing to release a new line of Texas themed bullion unlike any they have done in the past. They asked us to help create an email announcement that would inform their customers of the soon-to-launch products.  We created a graphic that revealed only half of each coin and bar so the viewer was left wanting to see more. After further review, the client requested to hide even more of the image so the customer was left with merely a peek of the designs. The graphic was meant to be a tease — to create anticipation of the arrival of the new Texas Bullion Series.

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