Case Study :: W2A

The Setup: After years of thinking that their firm was something they were doing 'for now', the partners at Washington2Advocates made the decision to dig in and up the ante — to go big or go home. And, to the conclusion that their current branding didn't quite live up to their new perspective.

The Goal: Complete redesign of logo, print collateral and website. The client gave license to explore any and everything that seemed interesting — including shifting their name from Washington2Advocates to W2A.

The Catch: They loved two things about their existing identity — the color green and trees. Everything else was fair game.

The Big Idea: Migrating a client base from an existing brand to a new brand can be dicey — particularly with a name change. To ease that transition, we took their two favorite aspects of the existing brand with us into the new.To help the client identify and embrace a new look that represented their new stance, we took the logo in very different stylistic directions. We also embraced the tree concept in two of the three options and explored how much of their name would make the leap to the new identity.

Survey Says: The decision was quickly narrowed down to Options 2 & 3. Can you guess which option they went with?

Option 1: Northwest Traditional

  • Logo lock-up leverages an old-style, worn font accentuated with painterly trees, resting on a grounding line
  • Mark is grounded with solid, slightly bumpy bottom line

Option 2: Typographic

  • Merged 'W' and 'A' set in a strong and bold sans serif font offset with a delicate, serifed '2'
  • Firm name, accentuated with bold lines, forms the base of the mark
  • Explores ‘lock-up’ approach. Firm mark and name become one and are always connected to one another

Option 3: Modern

  • Logo balances a modern, curvy font with a stylized tree illustration
  • Streamlined, condensed secondary font used for wordmark
  • Explores 'kit of parts' approach. Identity consists of multiple parts, fluidly engaging in different configurations on each piece of collateral

The Big Reveal: They chose Option 2 of course! The Mad Men look of this option struck the perfect balance of bold and friendly. You can see the whole shebang and download our whitepaper on the case study just by clicking right here.