Brand Identity Development

Quarex is a startup landscaping company based in Toronto, Canada. The company challenges people's perception of the construction industry being rusty and unfriendly.
The brand identity had to reflect the values that make up its brand name; Quality Product, Reliable Partnership, and Excellent Service, while helping it stand out in the market.

🔍 Challenge

My challenge for this project was to balance friendliness with professionalism. I wanted the brand to be welcoming and unique but still appear reliable and precise.

"How can I help a landscaping company challenge the narrative surrounding the industry?"

✏️ Ideation

During the mood-boarding process, I found that I could use nature-inspired colours such as green, orange, and brown to express the inviting and warm brand mood while using geometric shapes to represent the professional and precise service that Quarex offers. As I started working on the logo, I used various kinds of objects, letters, and shapes as inspiration. I made hundreds of sketches and polished them into 7 digital sketches. I wanted to make something that was simple yet unique and unforgettable.

🔎 Click on the image to zoom

💡 Solution

The finalized logo uses the letter “Q” with its tail inside to create a side profile smiley face that represents friendliness. The brick underneath symbolizes tiles used in landscaping and an arm reaching out to clients.

The typeface for the logo wordmark, Brother 1816 has a playful quality with a good balance between the thickest and thinnest parts. For the brand typeface, I chose Museo Sans which is similar to Brother 1816 and is legible even when the text is small and light.

The brand colour palette is inspired by things you can find in a backyard. 
For the primary colours, I initially came up with dark green to represent reliability and calmness while bright yellow contrasts that and expresses the energizing and fresh voice of the brand. After consulting with the client, we decided on a more calm and subtle light brown.

Geometric shapes and custom illustrations can be used for various design compositions to communicate friendliness effectively.

✨ Mockups