Regular readers of our Flourishing Blog probably can’t fail to have noticed our excitement surrounding the relaunch of wedding jewellery design company Yarwood White’s website. We launched the site with a flourish back in December but had been working on the rebrand and reposition of the business for several months prior to planning the website.
With a bit of breathing space finally I thought it was time to share with you how the new identity came into being. It’s funny, because writing this post with the benefit of hindsight I can see that, for me at least, there is a clear cut winner from the initial concepts, it suits the brand so well. Of course at the time, things weren’t quite so straightforward!
Yarwood-White is one of the UK’s leading bridal jewellery design companies. Well known for her attention to detail, stylish design and celebrity clients, two babies in two years had taken its toll on Clare’s business. Competitors had flooded the market, emulating many of Yarwood-White’s designs, marketing material and undercutting her on price. Creative Director Clare was ready to “get back in the race” – redefine her brand position and create a website that helped her business grow, as well as becoming more efficient at the back end.
Redefining the niche…
When Clare first launched her business she had a clear niche in the market, but times change, competitors move in, your proposition develops and changes and you suddenly realise that what seemed so clear has become a little bit muddy. We started by working with Clare and her team on their niche. We worked through a couple of Marketing Mentoring sessions to establish exactly what made the company unique, what they wanted to be known for and what their clients wanted. We also balanced that against competitor offerings and carved out a niche that we were all comfortable with.
Visualising the plan
It’s all very well having ideas in your mind, but they needed to be translated and Yarwood-White is an established brand so we couldn’t take any chances with the redesign. We started with a team Flourish-Yarwood-White mood board session which helped clarify our thoughts further and interestingly the colour palette emerged through the session. We were unsure about whether Yarwood-White should be summer (as previously) or Autumn or even Winter. We settled with the Summer side of Autumn which I think is the right place to be. And interestingly although we didn’t expressly set out to use purple and turquoise, they emerged in the mood board and certainly make sense in terms of what they say: quality, vision, innovation, creativity.
So on with the designs… As a team we brainstormed a number of concepts and these four made the final cut…
Concept One
In hindsight I can see that this was too prissy, floaty, not strong enough. At the time it seemed like something worth exploring, especially given that we were rebranding from a very soft, Summery identity. Here’s the logo in context.
Concept Two
I remember the studio being split on this one, as was the feedback from Clare’s contacts. Many loved the distinctive style. For me it was too twee… Interesting to see the old website in the context of this logo – all Chloe has changed is the logo in the header.
Concept Three
I still love this concept. We tweaked the colours and refined the typography but I love its’ confidence and strength as well as the creative flair in the icon.
The phrases didn’t make it into the final cull… But we quite liked the concept!
Concept Four
I loved this one. I loved the beauty of the icon and the strength in the type. I also loved the colour combinations. That said, I think the right concept won!
So with a colour palette tweak or two and a few typography refinements I present to you the finished Yarwood-White logo…
Tagged as in Branding, Case Studies, Colour Psychology, From The Studio, Graphic Design, Logo Design, Mood Boards
