Rarebird developed brand look book to highlight Hand Maiden’s fashion sensibilities and reinforce the premium stature of the brand. Our approach with the photo shoot and layout was to contrast mood with product and nature details, feature our local landscape, and create a sense of luxury with generosity of space.
Working with strategy work developed by Alexandra Orozco and Covina Biomedical, Rarebird audited the competitive landscape and looked for some great examples of reference work in parallel industries. With this research and benchmarking, we framed up the opportunities for brand development.
Armed with a good understanding of the brand attributes hierarchy and a signed off graphic landscape, we developed distinct visual approaches for the corporate logo for signoff and development. As a new company with a goal of securing investment partnership, initial deliverables were a light Brand Standard Guide and business cards, printed by Bounty.
Rarebird was tasked with creating a brand language for a Millenial target market promoting ‘a professional product for serious use’ while emphasizing the actual product as ‘a fun and easy activity’. In addition, the booth (originally designed in a cylindrical format as shown below) must stand out in crowded and visually busy malls and university campus common spaces.
Use of a 5 step process illustration, with key words to quickly gain understanding is a key brand element on booth and in marketing materials. We also focussed energy on re-engineering the in-booth user experience and UI to ensure ease-of-use and promote recommendations.
The Bike Friendly Certification Program allows certification of any building, be it retail, office, apartment etc. to a level of certification based on their infrastructure and support for cycling as a viable transportation choice for their staff, tenants, clients, customers or students. The program is supported by the Nova Scotia Department of Energy with the goal of long-term sustainability and growing a strong Bike-Friendly brand in Halifax and eventually across the province.
With the goal of having the certification make people warm to the applicant, we developed a mark that was eye catching, positive and all-around friendly. This was carried across window stickers, a brochure and the HRM site, where people can learn more, apply, and promote their bike-friendliness.
In developing a labelling system for a hand dyeing company selling high end yarns for knitters, we strove to reflect the tactility of the yarn and include a process like theirs, with an organic nature. For stock we picked a real felt paper, and to match the irregularity, we created large areas of thermography which provides an organic final result.
Check out our tags featured on For Print Only.
The Hand Maiden website was designed to highlight the subtle characteristics of each yarn and the luscious colours they’re dyed in.
Kerr Global was founded from a business need at Frontier Technologies, another Kerr Group company, for fleet tracking information. Born out of necessity, the naming and brand was largely unplanned. With several years under its belt, a great value proposition and a growing client list, it became time to relaunch the company with a stronger focus. Kerr worked with Alexandra Orozco of Earthlogic on brand positioning and naming, and Rarebird was brought in to turn that great work into a visual expression. The goal was to balance a blue chip feel with a modern, technologically savvy company that simplifies complex problems.
At the same time, we were asked to refine the Kerr Group logo, so that it sat comfortably with both Northern BI and Frontier Technologies. The approach was to present Kerr Group as the strong, quiet, reassuring backer for both companies.
Much like you might see the hidden ‘N’ in the symbol, Northern BI sees the important information in the data.
Owned and run by two guys who just love technical products and create their own cool technology, Sunsel obviously needed to reflect their passion and drive in their brand.
Having built Sunsel into a local success story, our job was to reflect who they’d become 10 years later, a company ready to expand beyond its loyal word-of-mouth regional market.
The answer? “Bring us what’s next.”
A bold call to action and statement of what gets them up in the morning.
We furthered the messaging to build on their core strengths of being equipped, committed, and expert, which are implicitly three legs of a stool.
Visual language was kept nicely restrained to balance the bold language and promote their assured capability and stability. A heavy use of white space, in combination with multiple square cropped images (referencing the coming together of the project elements), balances manufacturing complexity with the confidence they provide their clients.
Working with Bicycle Nova Scotia and Nova Scotia Tourism Association, our task was to create a cohesive branded experience for a range of brochures. Each region a deserved a distinct destination feel and individual experience. As a new offering, we wanted to imbue the program with a reassurance of quality, while providing specific and highly usable cycling content.
The maps stand out to the degree that auto drivers have been picking them up for their own purposes. Hopefully a few of them go multi-modal.
The Planning and Design Centre created a goal of bringing a Ciclovia style event to Halifax. A working group was struck and Cameron (at Breakhouse at the time) became a core member. Switch was picked as a name and a brand developed. Cameron continued in the working group as the event took shape, creating materials from banners and buttons, route maps to posters, to twitter backgrounds and web banners. The project continues to have a high visual impact on street and in media.
Combining a looseness in the icon with careful type sizing and spacing, the Mineville Wool Project brand creates a sense of intimacy for an online project while confirming a focus on top quality yarns. The website was designed to be product forward with ease of shopping the top priority.
The Dalhousie Global Health Office is a small department with an important, wide-ranging set of mandates, from helping medical students have good overseas experiences to encouraging African-Nova Scotian enrolment in medical programs, administering certification of foreign trained doctors and running an incoming exchange program with overseas universities.
Each focus was unique, complicated and targeting a distinct audience. Yet the Office needed the postcard designs to stand out, giving them a bigger voice and presence on campus as well. The answer was some simple graphic consistency, good copywriting and big type highlighting key words while getting all the required small type in.