Something New Painting & Renovation
A brand system created from a logo that already existed.
Year
2026 - Ongoing
Discipline
Identity Systems & Marketing Systems
Scope
Brand identity, marketing strategy, website design & build
The Brief
Something New Painting and Renovation is a Detroit-area contracting business run by Neal Williams, handling interior and exterior painting and home renovation. The company had a track record and a logo already in use, but nothing around it: no consistent typography, no defined palette, no marketing system, no through-line from one touchpoint to the next. Neal needed the business to present as established as it already was.
The logo was staying, and it was the only fixed point. So instead of designing around it, I designed out of it.
The Approach
I treated the existing logo as source material rather than a constraint. The wordmark already carried a typographic voice and a color relationship, so I pulled the type and the palette directly from it and extended both into a full system. That kept everything downstream feeling native to the mark the business already owned, rather than bolted on beside it.
From there I built the pieces that turn a logo into a brand: a documented identity guide covering type, color, and usage, a marketing strategy sized for an owner-operated business rather than an agency retainer, and a website build that put the whole system into practice.
The System
The palette and typography both trace back to the wordmark, which is what holds the system together. Crimson leads, charcoal and cream carry the weight, and the type is drawn from the letterforms already in the logo, so the display and body faces feel like relatives of the mark rather than strangers to it. The result is a system a one-person business can actually run: enough structure to look established, few enough rules to stay usable.
The identity is currently in use across the business's site and outreach.
