The Window Shop Jewelers has been a Northport Village institution since 1976. Aside from proprietor Jean McNeill’s smiling visage, the store was identified by a logo featuring stylized, hand-drawn vines. Over the years, The Window Shop grew in both stature and fame, but like so many icons from the era, the logo did not keep pace. Occasionally the thin vines would disappear in ads and printed materials. And the original artwork went missing.
Progressive Marketing Group, Inc. was charged with rebranding… including revising the original logo design to match the new Window Shop realities, which incorporated an entirely new realm of web, email, and social media applications. The PMG creative team analyzed what had made The Window Shop so successful through the years – outstanding product selection, the personal touch, a sterling (no pun intended) reputation and the three E’s… Elegance, Eclectics and Expertise. The strategy was to maintain and positive associations of the vines, update the art, and up-style the typography. This would maintain the feel, impact and visualization of the original logo while modernizing it to a more contemporary and usable style.
The first pass included 14 distinct logo directions from three PMG designers. Then the winnowing process began, with comments like “too heavy,” “too thin”, “not thin enough”, “works great in color, but not black and white,” etc. The selection was narrowed to three. After careful deliberation and tweaking, the final logo began to emerge. A Harrington typeface was selected for the cap letters “T” and “W”. The letters evoked elegance without disappearing or looking too flimsy and they stood out. The cap “S” was modified and simplified. Other letters were rendered in Com Nuvu and in a Berthold extended face. This combination gave the new logo a quiet strength that was scalable from business card and online banner sizes to store signage and full-scale banners. PMG also completely stylized the vines while retaining their evocative structure. They were rendered in a gradient of brown with one leaf forming the dot on the “i” in the word “Window”. “The Window Shop” was assigned solid black and “Jewelers” was treated with… what else? Gold!
“The first logo was with us since 1976 and followed us through three different shop locations. It is difficult to change something that has served so well for so long,” Jean McNeill said. “The Window Shop itself has grown and a new look that more accurately matched what we are today was needed. Our new logo really represents our new direction extremely well.” The new logo and identity has been worked into all branded materials for The Window Shop including a new website (http://www.thewindowshopjewelers.com),business cards, television commercials, sales receipts and jewelry presentation boxes.
