The Client

After completing the redesign for their logo, The Head Professional and General Manager of River Bend Golf and Recreation Centre reached later that winter wanting to develop a new logo for their  Club Fitting area…which would affectionately be known as “The Pit”.

The Pit was born in 2020 when the staff at River Bend decided to renovate their teaching academy and turn it into a fitting center. The goal of our professional club fitting staff is to promise users an exclusive experience and to guarantee the best equipment for each individual’s golf swing.

Conceptualize

During the briefing, the staff at River Bend explained the story behind the name of the new fitting centre. The Pit was named due to the fitting centre being located in the Red Deer old gravel pit from many years ago. The tie to the history of the city was a perfect starting point for my design. As with most expansions of a branding message, Phil and his staff wanted to keep some of the elements from the new Riverbend logo. My thoughts were to take the idea of the gravel pit and turn it into a golf-related design that would work perfectly for their new centre.

Create

For the initial concepts, I wanted to provide two different ideas, one that utilized the “gravel pit” idea and the other one that simplified the design and utilized the shield and typeface links to the River Bend logo.

For the gravel pit logo, I utilized different shapes of rocks to create movement within the designs. I added some golf-related items to some of the designs to link what the business actually does to the design.

The simpler logo designs focused more on the name of the business and used some standard golf symbols to round out the designs. The colour schemes and typefaces for each design were pulled from their existing logo to keep a consistent brand message.

As you can see from the righthand side, the first round of revisions took the designs in a new direction. Although Phil and his team were intrigued by the gravel pit idea, they weren’t sold on the overall concept and wanted to see some more variations to that concept as well as expand upon the text-based concept I provided initially. I made some minor adjustments to the gravel pit idea, just expanding the size and orientation to provide more room and space. To modify the type-based design I went back to the River Bend logo design and looked carefully at elements that I could tie into this new design. I pulled the graphic found in the ‘R’ of that design and strategically fit it within the ‘P’ of the new design.

After the first round of revisions was submitted, the staff at River Bend decided against the gravel pit idea, as they felt there wasn’t enough of a connection to the game of golf and club fitting. They were very intrigued by the new design that incorporated the golfer into the ‘P’ and wanted to expand on that idea.

The final revisions had minor differences between the concepts. We needed to add a relation to River Bend into the design as well as try different colour variations in order to find a result that communicated the intended message. We narrowed down the final design to the more simple version to allow for easier branding across apparel and other corporate logoing purposes.

Communicate

It is always exciting to work with repeat customers and this project was no different. The staff at River Bend were very clear in their design choices and the message they wanted to convey. The simple and clean design has a modern flair to it and incorporates proper nods to the overall branding message desired by the staff. There are straightforward nods to golf, River Bend itself and their main logo. The overall design offers clear and concise lines that guide the eye throughout.