We’ve been so busy making our clients look hella fly, that finding time to do the same for our small-but-mighty creative agency was… A challenge! Nice problem to have, even nicer to solve. Earlier this year, Team Heart committed to practicing what we preach: Take care of your brand. Be thoughtful, be intentional, be genuine, be interesting. Have some goshdang style. And of course, always show, never tell.

Tall order, right?

So, in early 2019, we brainstormed a lot: in bigger groups and smaller ones, over coffee, over beers, over kombucha, over some combination of the above. We started Google doc upon Google doc to jot down “I was just in the shower” ideas, and we carved out solid focus time to answer those existential “Who are we?” questions. Word banks and vague ideas began to solidify, we fired up the ol’ Adobe suite, and Version 1.0s became Version 2.0s. Lo and behold, a rebrand for the hardest working, most low-key food and beverage marketing agency was born.

It’s Never just a Logo

Regardless of whether you’re a B2B or B2C business, branding matters. We all know about the elevator pitch—branding is the elevator pitch of the elevator pitch. It’s the rocket pitch, if you will. Visual information is instant. Your brain knows right away whether the people behind a certain aesthetic are silly, formal, rebellious, traditional, friendly, trendy. Et cetera.

As such, every few years, a marketing professional worth her salt needs to revisit their brand and ask important questions:

• Does this still speak to who we are?

• Does this still resonate with the people we’re trying to reach?

• What is our competitive edge?

• If we need changes, are we ready to dedicate resources to implement them?

If you have solid answers for all of the above, like we (eventually) did, you know it’s time to undertake a rebrand.

While we’d been rolling with the same look since 2015, everything within us and around us evolved. The industry changed, design changed, we changed. Our old brand conveyed airiness, sleekness, and a certain delicate touch; we became bolder. Individually and as a company (a women-owned and run one at that), we simultaneously began to give less of a fuck about certain things (like whether anyone is turned off by our progressive, feminist values/politics), and more about certain other things (like speaking up about said values/politics). In biz speak, we’ve had a massive reallocation of our fucks resources.

So thanks for our new brand, Trump? (Kidding, but not entirely.)

The Heart of Heart Creative

We knew that “delicate” no longer fit. What does fit was a big question, one that we brainstormed to oblivion and back and came out on the other side with several things that speak to our essence in the most fundamental way:

Boldness. Here’s the thing: We reject the idea that “bold” = masculine vibes, hard angles and edges, high contrast, and dark colors. Boldness has no gender. The wiz behind this project, our Photographer and Designer Emilia Puentes, designed an entire graphics suite that spoke to this: a boldness rooted in color, modern design choices, abstract shapes, and Ben-Day dots. We love those freakin’ dots.

Portland. Bonus points if you noticed a clouds-and-rain theme. Our Creative team gathered for our first all-day design workshop to lay the foundations of our new brand at a space with a vast skylight, on a very rainy Portland day. Emilia translated this distinctive sound visually—the regularity of the lines, short and long, creates flow and adds a soothing, geometric touch to our overall designs.

 

Food. Did you spot an egg or two in our new branding? Turning delicious things into art is something we do daily; this is simply one step further, abstracting it into lines, shapes, and colors. Even as we grow and take on work outside of our primary industry, our bread and butter has been, well… Bread and butter, and it shows.

Fun. We don’t market car insurance, and we want you to know that right away. We’re in the business of colors that energize, typefaces that delight, and shapes that intrigue (Is that ginger, fam? We’ll never tell).

The Whole Package

So, how did these ideas translate to all the components of our brand? Well.

THE NAME. We were open to starting everything—everything!—from scratch. However, in the end, nothing fit as well as we wanted. And as we evolved the discussion, what once felt cutesy started to feel fiery, determined, passionate, and bold. So we simply refined “HEART: Creative Culinary Agency” to the simpler, more inclusive Heart Creative. We have worked with clients outside the food realm already, and needed to reflect that in our messaging.

THE TAGLINE. It came out of someone’s mouth at a brainstorming session (we believe it was Co-Founder, Mollie Harris), and felt so right, we kept coming back to it. It works because it’s us, it’s ownable, needs no explanation, and it imbues and applies to everything we do. We don’t do mediocre.

THE COLORS. Keep what you like, discard what you don’t, right? We loved the idea of continuing with orange; not Halloween orange, but a natural-world orange. A satsuma orange. A tropical-cocktail orange. A jammy-egg-yolk orange. So, we set about to find some friends for it: three shades of modern slate blue, and a yellow to balance and bridge the gap.

THE FONTS. Boy, there are some really strong trends in typefaces in 2019. Design trends are a funny thing: Embrace them fully and prepare to look outdated in a few short years. Ignore them at your peril/be boring forever. We believe the right approach lies in the middle: Especially given that a brand really needs 2, maybe even 3 fonts for a look across all media (website, presentations, other materials), this is a good opportunity to dip a toe in the trend waters, maybe even a whole limb—without diving in so hard you can’t change course when the current changes.

THE LOGO + ICONS. An entire brand suite is more than a logo. Not everything looks good in every context. That is why we chose something traditional, as well as something heavily patterned, full-bleed. It now sits on our wall—and is much more impactful than a single logo in the middle would be. And sometimes, a small subtle touch of your brand—for example, in the corner of a presentation—is all that’s needed.

THE PATTERNS. In addition to the logo and icons, patterns can be incredibly useful. We do a lot of presentations—A LOT—and having a variety of cohesive, fun elements has been upping our game. You’ll see these on our website, our Instagram story highlights, and basically anywhere else we can put them.

In sum: The old Heart Creative can’t come to the phone right now. She is just too awesome*.

*j/k, call us!