Baumgartens is a highly successful family run business based in Atlanta, Georgia serving the office supply industry. The company had traditionally sold through wholesalers, but wanted to develop a bigger presence in retail stores such as Staples, Office Depot, Walmart and Target.
In the existing wholesale channels the strength of their branding and identity did not count for much as products were usually ordered from a catalog. Entering the retail channels meant that the company needed to have a stronger, more recognizable brand and consistent identity across all of their touch points in order to build recognition among end users.
Baumgartens translated from Austrian means tree garden, hence the tree in the logo. However, the style of the logo with a very literal image of a tree and script font did not lend itself to presenting the company that Baumgartens had become – a modern environmentally conscious and sustainability focused supplier. Due to the fussiness of the script type, the logo was difficult to read at small scale and on a shelf in a retail store.
In redesigning the logo we worked to develop the identity to present a more modern fresh feeling for the brand and firmly tie it to sustainability, while not loosing the link to its heritage and the names meaning. The more block like approach ensured that the logo worked well at small scale and presented a form that was much more recognizable and memorable on the shelf.
Focusing on solving the real problems of identity and recognizability in a retail environment helped to steer the final direction of the design. Simplification at every step turned out to be the key to better recognizability.