- Several years ago,
the creative director for the Sundance brand contacted me
with the goal of clarifying and evolving the Sundance brand.
The challenge was to unify
several disparate business entities under one visual system.
This required an evolution of the current logos used
for each entity.
And some of these logos were beloved
by the people who work there.
I began the process with interviews and research.
I uncovered several logos in use.
The goal was to determine if one of the existing logos
had equity and was remembered by the audience.
Once I determined that the previous
primary mark was well-crafted,
there was no obvious audience recognition.
I then followed the process I outlined
in my branding course.
Working with the team at Sundance,
my team and I determined who the current audience was
and who it could be.
I identified the values and refined the mission statement
and we created a list of brand attributes.
Now we began the exploration of the identity.
The two primary logos in use worked when they were created,
but didn't align with the new brand attributes.
One was difficult to read and reproduce
and the other could feel juvenile.
We didn't want to lose the friendliness of either
so the typographic studies started with the original
and slowly moved away towards other options.
The red sun with lines was a favorite at Sundance
and Robert Redford wanted another icon.
Moving from the typographic study, we explored iconography.
Again, starting from the original
and then looking at different icons
that represent other ideas
such as community, guides, and energy.
The icons and typographic studies were combined
and several favorites began to rise to the top.
The sun couldn't disappear.
It was part of the name and talked about energy and light.
It could now incorporate the idea of focus and film.
The typography was now all caps, seeming more mature.
But we incorporated friendly elements
such as the horseshoe-shaped C.
The system needed to work
across multiple entities and programs.
So we tested the typographic options as a unified family.
One stood out as the most successful.
The color palette came from a conversation
with Robert Redford
who discussed his appreciation
for the rich colors of the natural world in his environment,
Earth red, deep blue, and other colors.
The type palette used a custom typeface
designed for this project
and a secondary Serif typeface.
And finally the image choices
turn to Sundance's rich content.
The result was a cohesive system
that maintained the spirit of the original,
but unified the vision both visually and conceptually.