Case Study //
Wahl & Holland Home
Although they chose to keep their original copy-and-paste logo, the concepts I created with them provide a unique case study.
Summary
After exploring multiple different aesthetic avenues, the Wahl & Holland team decided to roll the dice with their original logo. However, we developed several concepts that I felt were quite successful.
Challenges
Lacks distinct visual style
Client wants to keep same elements
Representational vs. conceptual
Note: The blue lines indicate the vertical and horizontal midpoint are the lines to which every element should be aligned. The red lines are demonstrating the numerous misalignments.
About the Client
Wahl & Holland Home is a brand new not-for-profit organization looking to build a residential healing center where single mothers can live with their young children while receiving treatment for mental health or substance use disorder diagnoses.
The organization is named in honor of two women who lost their lives to substance use disorder.
Original Branding
As someone who counts branding as one of his design specialties, I nearly fainted when I saw the original Wahl & Holland logo: To say it was in dire shape was a colossal understatement.
Outside of the disjointed copy-and-paste iconography, the typography was also a horror story. The actual name of the company is smaller and less prominent than the series of keywords (presumably intended as a tagline) listed below the main icon.
Client Requests
The client wanted to keep as many of the central elements — e.g. the houses, the mother and daughter, and the handshake icon — as possible.
The client emphasized that the logo needed to appeal to woman who are experiencing a very difficult time in their lives.
Concept 1
"Heart & Home"
The idea behind this concept was to integrate some of the disparate imagery in the original icon with more of a minimal style. As you can see, the "Heart & Home" concept was built using very simple imagery of a heart, house, and upheld hands.
Concept 2
"Dutch Muse"
As more of a departure from the original concept, the idea behind "Dutch Muse" was due to the names Wahl and Holland being Dutch in origin. My intent was to create an abstract muse to serve almost as a guiding light for women needing help.
Concept 3
"Shaping Our Hearts"
When I started brainstorming for this project, one of the first ideas that popped into my head was the silhouette of hands creating the shape of a heart in front of a house. As if giving the home a protective hug, this design was meant to evoke feelings of comfort, reassurance, and safety.
Concept 4
"At Home With Love"
This monoline logo is a minimal concept meant to be elegantly simple. Similar to the original concept, there's a home element and a heart element, but in this case, the two are better integrated and, at least in my opinion, much more successful.
