Branding
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Written by
William Smith-Stubbs
November 2018
Years ago I had this old lumpy couch I picked up off the street.
It wasn’t very comfortable and it dusted you in flakes of fake-leather whenever you got anywhere near it. But still — it was familiar. It was my couch. So I kept it.
I only got rid of it when I moved apartments and couldn’t bear the effort of lugging that thing up and down flights of stairs.
It’s pretty common to hang on to things like this at home. And it’s something that companies and brands have to deal with, too. We clutter our homes with stuff we don’t really need, or have long outgrown. Just the same, we can sometimes clutter our workplaces with thoughts, ideas and designs that no longer serve us.
Sometimes, it’s good to take a long hard look at everything and do some spring cleaning.
Take us, for example. We’ve developed quite a complex brand since starting back in 2011 with our first campaign, Soften the Fck Up.
When we launched our proper grown-up DGR-1 charity, Spur Projects, we needed a logo for it, too.
A myriad of campaign-specific logos accompanied this.
Then, in 2017 we launched SPUR:LABS with a similar pick clad in bold neon-pink. Our non-profit entity was styled as SPUR:PROJECTS and got a fresh new look, too.
Yet, we still referred to the group as a whole as SPUR:. Naturally, we used a simple grayscale pick to represent everything.
Why a pick? No idea. Our first two logos were pro-bono work by a local designer and they served us well, for a time.
Still. It was starting to get a little messy. And, much like an old couch that you’ve slowly outgrown, we knew it was time for something new.
Time to grow up and clean house.
We decided — with classic ambition — to treat ourselves like a client project.
Over the last few weeks we’ve been developing a new brand identity based on an analytical and creative approach to the question:
Who are we?
Our process included weeks taking a critical eye to:
It’s been hard work.
It’s very much like cleaning out an attic and anguishing over what to keep and what to throw away — and discovering new sides of yourself along the way.
Still, after all that effort, we’re quite proud of the outcome. And we’re excited about spur:’s new brand identity.
By the way, we’ve made this simple. It’s no longer SPUR:LABS and SPUR:PROJECTS.
We are just spur:.
When specifically referring to our non-profit entity, spur:org.
Our new main logo is clean, simple, and modern — with a little sharpness.
The pick logo is no more.
On the end there is our new little friend. We call it the ‘dottür’.
Say hi, dottür.
Based on a colon, the dottür is all about anticipation, connection, explanation, continuity and the various challenges spur: tackles.
It’s also just a lot of fun to work with. We’ve developed a visual language for the dottür that carries well across a variety of illustrative icons.
We also redeveloped our brand colours. We had leaned towards bright and bold colours of the years. However, our new look required something more versatile and befitting our mission of a world that is fair, sustainable, and well.
We settled on three main hero colours to represent this but with ample room to play with different shades and combinations.
The brand refresh has also given us a good opportunity to assess how we make better purchasing and design decisions:
For any other design nerds out there, all the details on our brand and all our guidelines — from UI to imagery to illustrations — can be found at brand.wearespur.com.
We are so excited to roll out our new look and feel. After eight years, it feels like a breath of fresh air — like a freshly cleaned house.
Any thoughts on our new brand? Let us know!
