In early 2009, I did some pro-bono identity work for a startup named “The Daily Blank,” a satire news site for the Chicago area. The founder, Nick Peters, is a young entrepreneur who turned out to be a great contact.
Less than a year after my work for “The Daily Blank,” Nick was contacting me from Oslow, Norway with a new business he was involved with. The company, owned by Tor Kielland and founded by his grandfather, used to be in the textile business but was now moving into the digital age with a rather pragmatic goal. They were interested in creating products for people within new and merging businesses.
My role in this was to create two logos: One for the newly renamed company, BrightArch, and their first product, Organization Weaver.
With the BrightArch logo, the goal was to establish a strong mark that could be attached to future products ΜΆ meaning a look and feel that was open and easily adaptable to future products. The name BrightArch needed to be established with this logo as well, so a wordmark was necessary. And because this company was still in the early stages, they needed a font that was easily accessible.
The solution was a square (representing a rigid corporate structure) being sliced by a number of arches (representing paths through the corporate world). Ultimately, these arches form an abstract ‘B.’
The base font was the humanist Myriad Pro (modified for the wordmark). Because Myriad is installed with nearly every Adobe product, it was an ideal choice.
From there, the Organization Weaver logo was created, based on the work that had been started with the BrighArch logo. The idea was two abstractions weaving themselves together to create one larger whole. A number of visual metaphors are at work, but the one that I focused on most was creating a sort of road-map feel implying that Organization Weaver would be your guide. Keeping with abstractions creating letters, the mark also works as an abstract ‘W’.
What I like most about these two marks is how distinct both of their shapes are. Particularly the Organization Weaver logo. Both would be easy to draw from memory and look great in black and white (where the whole process started).
To finish this project, I also created some business cards. These were a big help in guiding the future of the brand.
Nick had this to say about the process:
“Chris was amazing to work with throughout the entire design process. From the ideation and concept phase all the way through to the pixel-perfect finishing phase. He has a keen design sense for what will work and what won’t, and focuses his effort on building an ideal design from a solid concept. He also manages to find the middle ground between being flexible and taking principled design stances. We wholeheartedly recommend Chris because of his skill and professionalism.”
BrightArch was a great client and I can only hope to work with them again.
