I was introduced to this project by Greenlight Marketing; the client was a new woodworking venture in Traverse City, Michigan. Greenlight worked directly with the owner to develop the Wildwood Carpentry name, and established a creative brief. I was tasked with the conceptual development and execution of the new logo.
The creative brief outlined a bold, modern, professional look & feel for Wildwood’s new visual assets. The owner also wished to appear somewhat upscale, to help ward off bargain-hunters.
Although a considerable number of concept sketches were produced for this project, the client’s favorite was one of the first (top left above); a “dovetail W”, made to evoke a popular joinery technique in carpentry (dovetailing). It felt cleverly referential, while still scoring high marks for simplicity. It also paired well with bold, industrial type.
A few of the other concepts shown above were developed further, but were eventually passed over. Once we settled on a typeface (Halvar), the angles of the dovetail icon were adjusted to complement the characters. Greenlight Marketing developed the color palette, business card layouts, and trailer graphics. A palette of muted, dark blues (visible in top image) added sophistication while still allowing the mark to feel sufficiently masculine.
