ATX’s Guerilla Suit Delivers a Double-Dose of Hometown Brand Love

Posted inThe PRINT Awards

Before we launch the new season of The PRINT Awards, we wanted to take another look at some of our favorite winning entries from this year. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight stellar creative work across the breadth of categories. The 2025 PRINT Awards will open for entries in early November 2024.

Be sure to subscribe to our emails to learn when and where to enter your best work this year!


Luigi Maldonado, an Argentine immigrant, and Michael Tabie, a New York expat, landed at Austin, Texas-based creative agency Guerilla Suit for different reasons. Maldonado, partner and art director, started as an intern in 2011 and, over the next 13 years, has played a crucial role in the agency’s brand and culture. Tabie joined Guerilla Suit as design director in 2020. In four years, he has earned his title as a production pro, working with clients such as Yeti, Academy Sports+Outdoors, ESPN, and Nike.

The pair have made their mark on Guerilla Suit and the design world, bringing home first and second place in The 2024 PRINT Awards Branding Campaigns category.

SXSW

Luigi Maldonado – First Place in Branding Campaigns

Founded in 1987, SXSW is best known for its annual conference celebrating the convergence of
the interactive, film, and music industries. What began as a vehicle to showcase Austin’s creative and music community to the world has done its job. The first year saw around 700 attendees. Today, it’s an essential destination for global professionals, welcoming over 300,000.

Since 2021, Guerilla Suit has collaborated with SXSW to develop the theme for each year’s conference and refresh the design system as the foundation for all visual communications and wayfinding for the annual SXSW festival. In 2024, with the pandemic era in the rearview, the team, led by Maldonado, landed on the theme of Global Reframing.

The design team’s challenge was to create a look and feel inspired by the new generation of global citizens bringing about change from the ground up. Guerilla Suit provided art direction, campaign, social media, content, guidelines, graphic design, merchandise, motion graphics, signage, and wayfinding. The team’s innovation won them first place in the Branding Campaigns category.


East Side Pies

Michael Tabie – Second Place in Branding Campaigns

Four years into his role as design director at Guerilla Suit, Tabie seems to have grown accustomed to the Texas sun. He’s also made his mark on beloved Austin institutions, like East Side Pies, the pizza choice for many a team lunch.

There’s more to East Side Pies than meets the eye. Its Austin-style pizza is bigger than its signature thin crust or sauces. ESP takes pride in quality ingredients and community by working with local farms and ranches. For 20 years, East Side Pies has marched to the beat of its own drum, delivering the best culinary-inspired cracker crust pies using fresh, handpicked ingredients. ESP tapped the Guerilla Suit team to refresh their iconic look and feel as they entered a new growth phase, opening their first brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Guerilla Suit’s work helped to deepen the brand and allow East Side Pies to embrace their status as a hometown original. The identity showcases Austin and leans into the acronym ESP by refreshing the All Seeing Pie logo and introducing mystical taglines and motifs across the brand story. The team’s work earned them second place in the Branding Campaign category.