Kenton’s Lesson Studio | A Two-in-One Brand Identity
Kenton Willem is a very talented jazz musician based on Vancouver Island. He approached me wanting a logo system that he could use for both his lesson studio and for performance advertising. After graduating from Berklee College of Music, Kenton moved back to the island to teach and perform. With his primary instruments being saxophone and piano, he wanted to include both in his logo. This proved to be an interesting challenge, but I was up for it!
Photo by HA Photography
Goals
The goal was to create a system that could be flexible in both contexts (performance & teaching) while communicating the core of what he does — which is making great music! Kenton told me he wanted it to be fun and vibrant. We took inspiration from blue note albums, Canada Modern icons, 60s/70s poster design, and sunset colours.
Deliverables
Brand Identity Design
Poster Design
Social Media Graphics
The Sketch
The icon
Solution
I had a branding class once where we were required to do 100 sketches for a logo. Although it sounded intimidating, I found once I reached the halfway mark I got out of my head a bit and was able to think of less obvious solutions. Since then if it makes sense for the project, I print out 100 squares and start sketching. This has become part of my process and how I ended up with this saxophone keyboard combo for Kenton. This logo system includes a stacked logo, a horizontal logo, a monogram, and a wordmark with variations for performance and teaching.
Horizontal Mark
Monogram
Application
The whole project comes together with business cards, book bags, posters, and signage. Having a flexible brand system makes designing for different applications seamless.
Interested in working together?
Every project starts with a free discovery call to get to know you and your goals so that we can discover what you need most, and how to design solutions that represent you best.
