Leadership Denton—if you live in Denton and love this city as much as we do, this program is something you’ve got to check out.
For their project this year, we built them a website and a logo, all in less than 24 hours:
CLIENT
Denton Technology Council
DATE
April 2016
SKILLS
Logo Design
Print Design
Website Design
Website Development
WEBSITE
Ok, let’s back up a bit—let me tell you a little about Leadership Denton.
The way it works is like this: Each year, some of the shooting stars of Denton, the real up-and-comers, are chosen by existing Denton leadership to join that year’s class.
Each year, a Leadership Denton class works on a project to improve the Denton Community (while learning more about how they can serve Denton on into the future).
It’s pretty cool, and it’s been going on for over 30 years.
And the class of 2015-2016 included our Master of Projects and Architect of Sales Randi Skinner!
Randi and her Leadership Denton team had one goal: Change Denton for the better.
We were super stoked to help them out however we could (mostly because this was secretly our way to help out the Denton community by helping Randi)!
You see, this year’s class was assigned one heck of a problem to focus on: Encouraging a tech community to grow in our community. They came up with some ideas, but there’s nothing like a little marketing oomph to turn ideas into reality.
The Problem
You see, the tech community already exists in Denton, and there are a lot of players involved at this stage of the game—players like Techmill and the Railyard, players doing cool things like creating Denton’s first coworking space.
The idea that Randi and her class came up with was this—suggesting that community leaders in Denton within the tech space form a technology council, something that successful tech-based cities, like Austin or Boulder, have already done. However, this wasn’t something that Leadership Denton’s class this year could implement on their own—all they could do is communicate the vision.
And what is a vision if not a branded vision? In order to really flesh out their vision, they need to create a brand, the heart of the idea, and some branding elements to go along with it, something visual and physical to show during their presentation.
And that’s where we came in.
The Blue Steele Solutions
Look, Randi is basically a genius when it comes to interacting with people—she’s got an emotional IQ over 9000.
But her logo design and website skills aren’t exactly up to par with our professional designer and professional developer.
So we lent them both out to Leadership Denton—because we believe in the vision that Randi and her class came up with, the vision of an interconnected Denton focused on bringing in high-tech business. You know, the kind of business that bring growth and jobs into communities.
And who doesn’t like growth and jobs?
We knew that the brand the class was envisioning needed physical form—a logo, colors, branding elements, shapes, and website.
A vision translated into a brand—with all the pieces you’d find in any corporate branding package.
Oh, and did I mention we did the whole thing in less than 24 hours?
Cause we did the whole thing in less than 24 hours.
(Turnarounds faster than a sneeze through a screen door are kind of our thing)
The Logo
This part was tough.
Because there’s already so many cool businesses and people involved in bringing tech companies and other entrepreneurs into Denton, the Denton Technology Council couldn’t supplant their efforts and take over.
The Council would have to mesh with everything that was already taking place and act as a support component, not a tech tyrant.
We tried to imagine what this actually looked like, and it made us think about the solar system, a bunch of planets (Techmill, the Railyard, the Denton Tech Council) orbiting the center of gravity, the star of the system (Denton itself of course!)
And there’s a single icon that represents Denton more than any other:
The Courthouse.
PLAYING MATCHMAKER
But there was more to do—we needed some color, and we couldn’t just start from scratch. Instead, we wanted to match the color scheme of Techmill and the Railyard, making the Denton Technology Council part of the system already in place. We came up with an entire branding board for the project.
As you can see from the logo, we chose colors that complement these other brands. We do a lot of logos around here, but this is something we’re particularly proud of—not only is it gorgeous, but we basically did this in 24 hours (Yeah, the whole fast turnaround thing? We got that down).
But a brand is much more than a logo—so we had to go deeper.
After all, it’s not much good to come up with a vision and have no plan of action—a Denton Tech Council is a grand idea, but how do you help people take the next step?
For us, the answer was obvious—a website!
The Website
This is where we really shine—websites are what keep our bread buttered after all.
The tough bit about the vision that Leadership Denton 2015-2016 came up with was exactly that—it could only be a vision for their purposes. Their class couldn’t work out the mechanics of such a program—that wouldn’t make sense and would be something the Tech Council itself would need to figure out.
So, how what do you do with a website that represents a simple vision, that doesn’t require a lot of crazy copy or overwhelming images to make its point?
We asked ourselves this—what’s the goal of this whole project? What does success look like for this Leadership Denton class?
Well that’s easy—success is the vision becoming reality! They just needed to get people interested.
And there’s our answer—it needs to communicate the vision and encourage people to get involved.
We built a website that housed the idea, the content explaining the vision, and we added a simple form to collect information from people interested in forming the council itself. Gathering leads for change—now that’s #Dentoning!
Want to see how it turned out (really, it’s a slick little chunk of WordPress wonder) Click the button below to take a look at the website.
Learn More
Interested in Leadership Denton? Want to learn more about the project? Click here to learn more about Leadership Denton.
And what about this amazing Technology Council we’ve been dazzling you with for the last 500 words? If you want to get involved with the Technology Council, learn more here.
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