Through Buffalo Spree Publishing, Inc., I was tasked with designing a new corporate identity logo for the Bank of Holland in Holland, NY.
Trying to get them away from the antiquated woodcut icon accompanying their all caps text, we hoped to modernize while still retaining a feel of Europe’s Holland. I was given a slew of brainstormed ideas spanning wooden shoes, windmills, and tulips—the last being what I chose to work from.
Rather than create the iconic shape of a tulip in profile that we all know, I wanted to give the bank a unique logo all its own. So, finding imagery of the flower from overhead, I discovered the symmetrical six-point star its core made. Drawing the petals to equal its symmetry, the image was born alongside an old-fashioned looking block serif font.
Unfortunately, the company did not buy the design and appears to have retained their current identity instead. Before finding this out, however, we did also draw up a few spec billboards as well to help show it at work. I stripped the design of a Dutch street sign to its geometric minimum as a platform to hold the logo and used a handwritten font with emoticon to portray the singular, hands-on support the bank has to offer its clientele.
Before settling on the tulip motif I also did different variations inside the Dutch street sign border and with a windmill at the center of the flower as well. Those thumbnails are below.
