Cass House - from Bed and Breakfast to Luxury Inn

I first met Jensen Lorenzen and Grace Wingett when they were about to open Papillon Restaurant in Baywood Park. When the pair decided to direct their creative energies towards a new project; the recently restored Cass House Inn (and restaurant) in Cayucos, they asked me to redesign their website.

Before

The historic inn has been painstakingly renovated and sumptuously furnished, so we felt it was important to define the Cass House brand in ways that reflected this. We drew inspiration from the Art Nouveau movement and employed a rich chocolate and coffee palette and elegant serif fonts to bring a touch of early 20th Century glamour to the project.

After

TekTegrity - Identity Update

One of my favorite clients is a local computer network company called TekTegrity and I've been working with them pretty much since I got my green card and started seven and eight. Maybe for this reason, I feel a sort of bond with them - because our businesses have developed side by side. Over the past few years TekTegrity has grown up quite a lot.

The first job I did for TekTegrity was a large flash animation for the home page of their website. The layout was based on their logo, which had been designed for them by Red Canary Productions (more later). The logo had strength; it effectively communicated a number of key themes, including the nature of TekTegrity’s business and some of its core values.


However, as the business grew and began to focus on marketing to a more executive clientele, it became time to re-evaluate their brand from the ground up. We submitted their identity design to the following tests (among others).

1. Is the design sustainable? Will it age favourably?
2. Is the design easily legible? Does it retain clarity in a variety of sizes?
3. Is the design versatile? Does it retain clarity across a range of media?

To summarise the conclusions of our research, it became clear that there were a number of things we should keep and a number we should change. The key strengths of the logo were identified as the boldness and character of its colour scheme and the “molecule” icon. However, the design had proven to be limited in its versatility and some of the stylistic elements were perceived as too “techy” and thought to be unsustainable.

Here’s the web version* of the new logo we came up with.


*the web version contains elements that are not suitable for many print applications, the use of gradient fills, for example.