ARTERRA LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTS

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Case Study: An Artful New Brand

The Brief

Arterra Landscape Architects was looking for a completely new brand for their established high-end landscape architecture studio. It needed to represent their wide range of projects, from traditional to modern, and express the artfulness of their process and work. It should also help attract the attention of their dream clients, including wineries and homeowners who want to create art-filled, legacy estates.

We developed a new logo, website and a graphics system, with a full suite of brand elements and collateral.

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Two patterns are used separately or together for a variety of brand elements. The grid speaks to the technical and precise elements of the studio's work, while the watercolor graphic underlines their focus on art and creativity.

The Process

The start

Arterra had their original brand and website for ten years, and they were ready for an update to modernize their look and fit their expanded business.

As technologies changed, they found their logo hard to fit into the small footprints for many online marketing channels, and saw that they needed something more flexible.

Their website was also not responsive, so it didn't display well on a phone, and the images were sized quite small in comparison to current websites.

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Defining a brand

We began with a conversation about the goals of the rebrand and a fun questionnaire to explore the studio's brand personality and what they wanted to convey.

The Brand

Arterra's brand conversation lead us to define that they were artful and whimsical, while remaining technically driven and process focused. The Arterra team is full of personality, and we wanted that to shine through the brand elements.

If they were a beverage, they would be a glass of champagne, a fun and festive drink steeped in history which takes an immense amount of both artistry and technical knowledge to create.

Goals

A modern portfolio website that shows off beautiful project photography, at any screen size
A brand that conveys artfulness and creativity, as well as structure and precision
A logo that looks natural on very contemporary projects as well as those with a traditional style

Logo Concepts

The studio was lead by three fantastic partners, each with her own defined design preferences, so we presented many options before finding the perfect typeface (font) and layout for the logo.

decision making

After narrowing down to three top logo concepts, we placed the logos on two very different projects by the studio to see how they would fit with the styles, which lead to the winner below!

Picking a Palette

Arterra wanted their brand color to remain purple, as it had been their signature since the beginning. Bemboom Design presented a selection of updated "smoky-purples" to choose from and suggested a palette of a medium purple-grey and a darker purple, with black and white to keep the emphasis on the striking photos of their projects.

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a tale of two patterns

While the logo stands well on its own, we wanted to add a graphic element to make the brand more memorable, tie together a full set of collateral and business stationary, and soften the wordmark. Early in the conceptual process, we presented a watercolor aspect along with the logo. On its own, it was striking, but not quite right. Noticing the two slopes of the "A" on either side of the word Arterra, Bemboom Design began playing around with a pattern picking up the slope of the capital A letterform.

Bemboom Design focused on both of these ideas, and decided to expand each out to a full bleed graphic.

The digitally hand-painted watercolor suggests the needed artful and soft aspect, while the grid adds structure, much like the interplay of plantings and hardscape in landscape design. Each can be used on its own or the pattern is layered over the watercolor, providing variation within the brand, while keeping it consistent.