Two thirds of today's Likes have an Austin connection, which I point out only because I need to fill at least two lines of text in my Friday Likes intros. The other third has to do with Chicago. So there.

Banger's

Recently opened in Austin, TX, Banger's is a Sausage House and Beer Garden, featuring over 40 varieties of the former and 100 on tap of the latter. In other words: heaven in what more closely resembles 100-degree hell (at least through Summer, then it's heaven in heaven). The identity, designed by Neighborhood Studio, has two great things going for it: (1) it captures the rugged chic look that complements the restaurant itself incredibly accurately (see Facebook photos) and (2) it is the best icon, in all of the history of Sausage Houses and Beer Gardens, to use so cleverly a beer mug and a sausage to form a cowboy boot. Giddy-up. [More].

Advanced Nutrients

For Advanced Nutrients, a company offering super-fertilizers and growth enhancement products for hydroponics, the process of growing plants indoors and without soil and perhaps but not necessarily of the smoking kind. Pentagram partner DJ Stout worked with fellow Austinite illustrator Marc Burckhardt to give Advanced Nutrients not one not two not twelve but fourteen different characters, each assigned to the different growers and nutrients. From the main guy Big Bud to Wet Betty to Kushie Kush to Piranha all characters look as if they were taken from early twentieth-century freak carnival posters. Which, in case there was any doubt, is a good wonderful strange thing. [More]

Farmhouse

Built within ad giant Leo Burnett, Farmhouse is an innovation group that "makes stuff worth advertising." To make them look the part, Chicago, IL-based Casey Martin created an identity that follows The Mullet Principle — business in the front, party in the back. The simple and subtle logo is set against spare white backgrounds and light and airy typography in the front and/or outside of the identity materials while the party is unleashed on the back and/or inside with super colorful backgrounds in chart- and pie-graph-like patterns. Plus: nice die-cut. [More]