The Refreshed Home
BRAND IDENTITY | VISUAL DESIGN SYSTEM | WEBSITE
Collaborating by Design
Client relationships that grow with your business
The Refreshed Home is Marie Graham's award-winning design and home staging consultancy based in Westchester County, NY. Her services cover every aspect of bringing properties to life, from staging homes and businesses for sale to rejuvenating interior spaces.
Working with residential and commercial clients, realtors and trades, Marie brings a friendly, individual approach to the creative process of redesigning spaces. Her work is grounded in understanding her clients' needs, underlined by the philosophy that bettering spaces elevates people and their lives.
Opportunity for growth
Sometimes a request for designing a new brand identity can lead to a fruitful, long lasting relationship. The foundation of these relationships is built on communication and understanding, and finding a connection with the client that inspires collaboration and fresh ideas.
Realizing a brand's potential
We first met Marie in 2007, as she was starting The Refreshed Home. We had a printing company at that time, and printed materials we designed for our clients. Marie came in looking for a supply of recycled paper to create her own business cards and stationery.
Marie's initial enquiry led to a discussion about our branding services for new companies. We encouraged Marie to think about her brand strategy, and the process of translating her ideas into an authentic visual identity for the business.
We got the process underway with a simple "show and tell" exercise, where the client collects items and images, and then explains to us what they find appealing and what they do not. Marie gave us very clear indications of her preferences. She favored purple and green for her color palette, and showed enthusiasm for the whimsical and organic.
The original logo design
Our original logo used a whimsical typeface in lowercase to highlight Marie's buoyant personality. Underlined by dancing leaves, the logo sparked curiosity and interest without being too offbeat.
The refreshed logo
The original design perfectly captured the look Marie wanted for her consultancy at that time. Over the years, however, Marie's business has matured, and she has focused on how and where to grow her business.
Successful brand strategies are not set in stone. They change to respond to the direction of the business, the market space, and the needs of the customer. For Marie, there came a time where the casual feel of the first logo needed reframing for a more upscale audience.
The new design evolves the original. For continuity, it retains the structure and the dancing leaves that have become essential elements of the brand's visual identity. The change to a classic serif typeface with traditional upper and lower case creates a very different impression which appeals to Marie’s preferred clientele.
The iterative process
Evolving the brand identity is an important part of a long-standing client relationship. Over the years, we continue to refresh our original website design to reflect the changes of Marie's growing business and needs of her target audiences. We also collaborate regularly to create digital and printed marketing communications. This ensures they are authentic and consistent with Marie's vision and vibrant personality.
An ongoing relationship
Marie believes in helping people to understand design, as well as the solutions she can offer. In the past we've designed a wide variety of materials for Marie to explain her approach to others, through newsletters, infographics, flyers, posters and banners.
Ditto! Design! has been my North Star since 2006.
One ongoing project is a series of postcards that Marie uses at events and as targeted mailings. These eye-catching cards use bright, unusual imagery that may appear to be unrelated to its subject matter, but reveals its connection in the text.
The images playfully draw the attention, while the text on the flip side breaks through clutter to promote the benefits of Marie's services, while allaying the fears and anxiety of potential clients.
The ideas for these cards can be sparked by anything, and Marie is comfortable sharing her thoughts in a responsive environment. This always leads to interesting discussions and inform the design of future marketing communications.
Meeting the brief
Marie is a true ambassador of her profession, who believes that success is derived from the value of counsel. This is the foundation of our continuing relationship, which allows freedom and trust to bounce ideas off each other to achieve effective results.
Your brand is a story unfolding across all customer touchpoints.
Jonah sachs