Design > Identity

Here’s how long I’ve been in the business: rebranding projects would start with the logo and follow with the stationery. Hahahahaha! Remember stationery? No? Ahem. Well, it’s still useful. It is! Ok, what’s most useful now is your email signature, and the way your company’s bill looks, and the envelope that carries it. That’s right, the junk drawer of identity. But it’s super important! Because any of those things can be the loose thread in the sweater. Someone in billing gets the idea to pull on a thread and everything unravels. I’m not being dramatic. I’ve seen it happen. Lots.

FINAL: Yep! Paper stationery! Business cards! Envelopes! They won’t die and they aren’t going away! What was once the most important piece of communication for a company has become the graphic designers junk drawer of to-do’s. But you gotta do it be…

FINAL: This whole project had to be done as economically as possible for a lot of reasons. So a clean look worked well in more ways than I thought then we got to the fleet graphics. I worked with the wrap company to design these things for maximum g… — **FINAL:** This whole project had to be done as economically as possible for a lot of reasons. So a clean look worked well in more ways than I thought then we got to the fleet graphics. I worked with the wrap company to design these things for maximum gangability in printing.

That’s why we were sure to have plans for the junk drawer stuff when we rebranded Continuum. We wrapped all our rules up in a detailed book of design guidelines so that any other vendor or employee could refer to it if they got the hankering (and preferably, permission) to make some Continuum materials on their own.

Fleet and building signage are far from junk drawer material because they’re so visible, but it’s a specialized use of the new identity. Do you know what it costs to wrap a van? It’s crazy expensive! And Continuum had 60+ various vehicles that needed to be rebranded. So I teamed with the signage company they picked so I could design graphics in a way that would let the printer gang up the job, maximizing the wrap material to its fullest. It helped a LOT to have a clean, white identity, letmetellyou . It was a bear to figure out, but fun at the same time. And guess what? The less wrap material you have on a vehicle, the longer it’ll last. The vans were all stripped and detailed (to get rid of ghosting from the old brand), and redressed in their fancy new graphics. Two years on they still look as good as new.

FINAL: While the building now looks WAY better than it did, I wish the graphic service bands weren’t so boring and straight on the building. I had comps of the bands organically swirling and looping their way across the building, but everyone wanted… — **FINAL:** While the building now looks WAY better than it did, I wish the graphic service bands weren’t so boring and straight on the building. I had comps of the bands organically swirling and looping their way across the building, but everyone wanted to play it safe. It also made it cheaper to have it painted. Those blue marks on my mock-up up top are to show stupid town planning that we were complying with a signage code that said we could only use 20% of the buildings surface.

Continuum’s HQ (formerly MI-Connection) was always kind of a dump. Situated in a virtual hole next to a tall railroad berm, you couldn’t really see it from the main road. They’d had a tall pole with a tiny lit rectangular sign atop. We had to ask Mooresville’s planning department to replace it with something a little taller. They said no. So we tore the sign pole down completely and turned the whole building into a sign. Fuck you, planning! We painted the whole building a bright, clean white which made it WAY more visible to traffic. And the existing architectural lighting made the thing glow like a shiny new Apple store at night.