CLIENT
Denton Chamber of Commerce
DATE
September 2016
SKILLS
New Brand Development
Logo Design
Website Design and Development
Developing a New Brand
The sum is greater than the parts — that’s the message underlying Denton’s newest conference: Thrive, an idea championed by the Denton Chamber of Commerce.
Thrive is, like most things around here, uniquely Denton. It’s what we think of when we think of this growing point on the DFW triangle.
The summit is built on three pillars: Retain, Sustain, Grow. Though the Chamber had some ideas, they needed us to come up with the essence of the brand, to give them the words they needed to explain the purpose and origin of the summit.
The idea behind the summit is to:
- Retain: Support the existing business community in Denton, including the growing medical, technical, and entrepreneurial folks streaming in each day, and help them establish their roots or grow new ones
- Sustain: Use existing resources to help both the traditional business community and the newcomers alike to keep bringing in business, exchange ideas, and see the incredible community around them as not just a place to do business, but a place to stay for the long term.
- Grow: Provide the tools necessary for all Denton businesses to grow year after year, to thrive in this community, and to build the community around them.
How We Helped
After developing the three pillars, the essence of the brand, we moved on to the logo, a crucial touch point for any brand.
The three pillars inspired the triangle shapes used throughout the website and the logo. The triangle shape appears regularly as a visual touchpoint throughout the website, and will feature prominently in further marketing materials.
However, the three points of the triangle, which represent the three pillars, are not the only theme found in the marketing materials we created. The idea of parts creating a greater whole needed to be featured as well.
You can see this in the logo — three triangles, coming together, form the Thrive summit. Alone, the triangles mean nothing. But together, they form a greater, more visually impactful, more forceful logo.
Our Process — Building the Blocks of a Conference
As you can see, the logo and the website didn’t just come out of our imaginations — we spent some time with the client, carefully reviewing their needs, their goals, and their thoughts behind the project.
After that, we considered the target audience — the established business owners and the up-and-coming entrepreneurs, their needs and goals, what would draw them to a conference and keep them coming back year after year.
We built the brand out of this, these needs and goals. By starting with the messaging and the spirit behind the conference, we were able to sketch out a minimal brand persona and audience persona.
We used these personas to start choosing visual elements, like the triangles, and imagining typography, a color scheme, and other visual themes and motifs to inform the website.
After laying all that groundwork, the website and the logo came pretty quickly and naturally. We set up a simple website with the goal of email capture — the conference is still months down the road, but we want to start generating interest now and getting people involved.
This is especially useful for a conference like this, where many components of the conference and details will not be worked out for months. Interest can still be generated without having every detail in place, and an email list of warm leads can be generated without the conference providers having to do much beyond referring people to the website.
Denton Is Ready to Thrive
Now that the conference wheels are rolling and they’ve got some branding momentum behind them, the Denton Chamber of Commerce can focus on what matters — building out the conference and getting people in the door.
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