01
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Revitalizing a legacy brand.
This is a study done for Smith & Wesson looking at how to update a legacy brand by making the logo more efficient when it comes to reproduction whilst maintaining familiarity. The study involves looking at spacial relationships, and deciding what features to keep and clean up. The goal was to change as little as possible while maximizing the utility of the mark. This logo is embossed, debossed and stamped into lots of different metals and resins at very small sizes. As you can see the old logo gets to be pretty illegible. It was important to keep the symbol very similar as the company has had this monogram in some form or another since the 1850s.
IDENTITY
01
Combined “W” and “&” to create unique ligature and to reduce elements.
02
Increased negative spaces in order to appear at smaller sizes.
03
Reduced size of diamonds to allow more breathing room throughout the mark.
04
The most dramatic change is this area that was very cluttered in the old logo.
