The logo in many instances is your first impression that a potential customer gets of your business. Whether it be simple text for your name, a picture, or a picture and text combination – the logo creates a different idea in each beholder’s mind of what your company has to offer. We wanted to tell a bit about the story of how we came to decide on our ‘Original Red Barn’ Red Barn Brewing Co. logo.
Our road to the logo for Red Barn Brewing Co. was a fun journey that started 3 years ago- which was a few years after we started planning our family farm brewery. For us, the logo wasn’t created until well after a few other pressing items were in place such as our business plan (which if you are starting your own company please make sure you do this before anything else), and the Incorporation number for our business (you don’t have to incorporate in all cases), as well as the trademark. You don’t have to follow our recipe verbatim but this was our route.
So now we had (or hope we ‘have’) a solid business plan in place in which covered everything from our financials to the types of beers we would launch with, to the setup of our tasting room, to the cost of our goods sold, to the experiences we would offer on the farm. There’s much more (105 pages to be exact), but we were now ready to create the essence of our brand by going through a sometimes fun, and sometimes grueling task of deciding on what were sometimes the smallest adjustments to finalize the logo in which you now know.
We aren’t creative designers, but if you are, great – maybe you can design your own logo. That’s just not us, we could only dream up the design and let the experts roll with our ideas or insights. Luckily, our designer kind of fell into our lap or maybe we fell into his lap… regardless, we met our designer through our friends down in Amherstburg at GL Heritage Brewing Company. They were the first farm brewery in Ontario in which we introduced ourselves to and since then we have become great friends and we lean on them from time to time as to seeing the success they have made in only a short number of years. The designer- drumroll…. Introducing from Tecumseh, Ontario: Mateo Roksandic. Why do we name him this boldy? Well other than he is an amazing guy, has a great vision, and his attention to detail is out of this world – the designer (in most instances) doesn’t get any credit. They are most times hidden in the background- which some might like as well, but you may know from our vision is that we want to showcase not only our own progress but also the steps we have taken and the people we have involved to get to this point. Unlike some paintings which give credit to the artist, most logos do not. Mateo owns his own design company called MadeByRoks- a bit of a play on his last name. When we reached out to Mateo, we didn’t even talk about our logo on Day 1. Creating your logo is one thing, but because your logo is going to be on all of your marketing materials, your building, anything you sell to the public it’s pretty important to think about if this designer will be the one you could see yourself working with in years to come. The same goes the other way for if the designer foresees your brand as part of their portfolio or if their goals align to yours.
After speaking with Mateo and seeing some of his previous work with other businesses and through GL Heritage’s marketing materials we knew we wanted to start a relationship with Mateo and have him work with us towards creating our own image for the company.
So where do we go from here? We have our company name and our brand all on the table- now what? Well a series of meetings to start brainstorming for both our team and Mateo to get a handle on where to begin.
**Side Note**As you may have read on a previous blog, Red Barn Brewing Company was inspired by our ‘Original Red Barn’. This barn was built over a hundred years ago on our 3rd generation family farm. The iconic nature of a (red) barn in our agricultural lush area- Chatham-Kent tied with our own family history was the foundation of our brewing company.
We gave Mateo a quick insight of our project, which now that I think about it was not really that short… he definitely got the full picture in terms of understanding our background and our vision(s) for Red Barn. Just to give you an idea about Mateo- he is a very cool guy (we aren’t biased), has a vast international client base, and he helped get his parent’s business off the ground- which by the way is very successful – shoutout to Healthy Mama- a super popular Vegan/Vegetarian restaurant in Tecumseh.
So, were we ready to actually start getting some actual designs made to start the process of yays or nays? At that moment in time it was a scary step, but years later we are so glad we dove in when we did. It wasn’t as painless as you might believe. The hardest part- and you might run into this if you aren’t a sole proprietor – is that there are 3 of us (partners) that had to come to a complete agreement as to what we wanted the logo to be. Although we may all have had different ideas from the beginning of the process, we all decided together as to what were the best options. We are all still in this together so that tells you something!
From the very beginning we told Mateo that we knew we wanted to incorporate the Original Red Barn into our logo. **Here’s a shoutout to Melissa Doyle our, friend, spiritual advisor and photographer who captured the Red Barn perfectly with the 3 of us in front of it a week before the teardown.** Even though Mateo knew from the get-go that we wanted this, he still wanted to give options. Well, who doesn’t like options! Even though from the beginning we told him how we were set on having the old barn incorporated into the overall design Mateo still wanted to make up a few other visions that we may get ideas from or feed off of to move towards the next revision. I can’t say for sure how many revisions there were in total of our final logo, but Mateo was patient with us in case we had a new idea or wanted another highlight to be explored. In total there were about 6 or 7 different designs Mateo laid out in front of us, including the original Red Barn idea. Let’s say for about 3 months straight, we went back and forth inching closer to the final design. Well, we did it, it was a great experience, and the best part is: we will only ever have to do it once! What was even more fun was when we launched our company and got to show our logo to the world!
From Mateo: “It is an absolute joy working with the family/team at Red Barn Brewing Co. The best part of our journey so far is the amazing shared vision we have regarding where we want to take our designs, what changes are needed and even what we don’t like in a design. It always seems like we are on the same page with whatever we are working on – this makes the entire project a much smoother and enjoyable experience! I can’t wait to grow with the team as they begin their journey into canning, marketing and of course the brewery experience itself. Cheers to Denny, Sandy and Dan!”
But, what fun would it be if we didn’t show you some of the other options we had on the table at one point in time, right? Here’s a little behind the scenes peak at some of the other options Mateo gave us as well as some very similar versions of our current logo. See if you can spot the differences, some obvious, some not at all!
Our logo may be everlasting, but our brand is still a baby. Thanks for your support and for your interest in our journey, we can’t wait to meet you when we open this year!
Cheers Eh,
Denny (for Sandy and Dan)
Ps- One question we have received a few times is: Why isn’t the barn you are building look like your logo? Well, there’s only one original Red Barn. But, we can’t wait to show you how we were able to incorporate this original barn into our Family Farm brewery when we open this year!
If you would like to reach out directly to Mateo please contact him at: mateoroksandic@gmail.com