In early 2019, I worked with the Traverse City Area Chamber of Commerce to refine their visual assets. This included re-working the organization’s main logo, and the creation of several additional logos to represent the Chamber’s sub-programs. You can find more on the outcomes of that project here (link coming soon).
Later that year, the executive director reached out to me again. She told me the Chamber was undergoing major organizational changes, including (but not limited to) combining with their parent entity, Traverse Connect. They were in the process of determining what name was most appropriate to the new organization, with its new service offering.
The recently re-worked logo was used as a method of test-driving potential new naming conventions; I put together several presentations articulating the visual strengths and challenges of each direction. After lengthy internal discussions, they determined that the “Traverse Connect” name better represented the new, combined organization, and accommodated their wider array of services.
The name change raised concerns about continued recognizability in the community; in lieu of the “Chamber of Commerce” language, retaining the maximum amount of visual equity from the previous Chamber brand became a chief concern. For that reason, we stepped back from the logo updates we’d made earlier in the year, opting instead for a re-drawn version of the organization’s earlier logo (no longer available in high-res or vector formats) with the new name attached.
Once the changes to the logo were finalized, the new assets were furnished to Lake Effect Digital for use in creating Traverse Connect’s new website, which launched later the same year, at which time the new, combined identity was also formally announced.
