Branding
For a new business owner, issues of business plans, financing, and product timelines were a lot to juggle. Branding is way outside my expertise. I had been mulling over the name for my yet-to-be-created publishing company for a few months. When I finally narrowed down the options, I knew what I had to do next - give Gavin a call and get his expert advice. Gavin listened very carefully. He provided insightful advice and helped me work through the rationale for selecting the brand name. In the end, it was none of the options on my list, but a variation of one. It is a clever connection of books to trees, and the tree that I had much fascination with, the famous Torrey Pine tree in La Jolla CA - the town in which the idea was born. I was so happy with it: Storrey Pine LLC. Shortly after my call, I completed a brand brief for the logo design. The brief was very simple to complete and allowed me to provide my preferences for the logo, including pictures of the true Torrey pine cones. A few weeks later, I had a slide deck in hand with nine logo options, each with its own name for easy reference, created by Bhupesh, a very talented designer. They were all strikingly beautiful - each had captured the natural beauty and majesty of the Torrey pine cone. I had a call with Gavin, who walked me through each of the images and helped me understand the design considerations - balance, symmetry, typography, and the ability for the logo to display well in black and white. I selected two designs from the deck for further development, along with a request for some modifications. Bhupesh did some experiments on the designs and provided a rationale for what would and would not work. The logo which I finally selected for development is called "Coniferous" and uses the print-block technique, where the pine cone and the nib are traditional while the print is modern. Next, Bhupesh very thoughtfully put together a “creative explorations” slide deck with some mockups of the logo applied to a business card, letterhead, books, and a tote bag to give me a sense of how my logo would look in real world settings. Finally, I received my brand identity kit with high-resolution images of the logo for print and business cards, as well as images for social media.
Gavin and Bhupesh delivered a very high-quality product with creativity, professionalism, and thoughtful attention to detail. They are masters of their space and their art. I am delighted with the brand name and logo for my company.