Rebranding the Wing PDX

The Wing PDX

Portland, OR and Seattle, WA

Refitting the Wing's Image

The Wing PDX is a company from Portland specializing in brand strategy and marketing. I worked on updating their visual identity to help tell the world about what they do, distinguish them from their competition, and form a base that they can work off of when creating assets in the future.

In working with the Wing PDX my goal was to create and codify visual brand guidelines, building off of the logo they had at the time.

Context
First Impressions Are Important

Unpacking the Current Brand

The Wing PDX's original brand suffered from a lack of legibility, stemming from low contrast. The orange in particular is too light against white, and the font selection relies only on light weights.

The client expressed that they felt their original colors were too "sporty," which I agreed with.

Client Needs

1 link: Interactive design system
1 PDF: Written guide (PDF)
1 JSON file: Power BI theme

Final Assets

1 Brand Kit - Visual Identity System
1 PowerPoint template
1 Instagram template set

This is the original brand kit, which contains similar shades of light orange and a light blue. From afar, the text and logo forms are not very legible since the colors and font weights are so light.

The client expressed that they would like to keep the logo, but update the brand scheme to embrace inspirations like Swiss minimalism and geometric aesthetics. They wanted new font and colors to reduce the "sportiness."

Conclusions from the Research

R.1

Embrace minimalism

The client expressed a love for minimalism but some reservations about how to use it properly. However, embracing minimalism as other digital consultancies have done could help potential customers identify the type of company The Wing is.

R.2

Content-first approach

Since the company is focused on brand strategy for their clients, what's most important is portraying their content. While they should be able to use imagery, the written words used in their materials should take precedence.

R.3

"It makes me think of the airport."

People who gave their impressions on the website and branded documents all associated The Wing PDX with the nearby PDX airport. People mentioned it was because of the wing imagery and the fact that they both use "PDX," the abbreviation for both the Portland International Airport and the city of Portland in general.

Components
The Bread and Butter, So to Speak

Logo

The client wanted to keep their original logo design, so I went in and updated how it interacted with color, as well as establish guidelines for logo lockups. This way we could honor the original design but place it more in line with the rest of the brand update.

This is a sample of Inter Bold, which became the primary title font.

Typography

Inspired by the client's love of Swiss minimalist design, and the fact that the client's final assets would be text-heavy, I decided to use two fonts: Karla and Inter. The result is something Helvetica-adjacent with a personal touch.

An example of typefaces Karla and Inter work together to create a font scheme that is modern and minimalist.

Color

The colors were shifted away from the sporty and illegible set to three core colors, four supporting colors, and a range of shades. The bright blue was removed to help distance the Wing PDX from its precious "airport-y" vibe.

Motifs

The client's vision lent itself really well to geometric patterns, halftones, and architectural lines. One of my favorite patterns was a halftone made from picking up one of the lines in the logo and duplicating to fill shapes, once again linking the original logo back to the new identity system.