Humble Beast

Services

Brand Strategy
Brand Identity System
Web Design & Development

COLLABORATORS

Overview

Humble Beast is a non-profit organization committed to helping creatives faithfully follow Jesus in their lives and their creativity based in Portland, OR.

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PHASE 1

Brand Strategy

Problem

Ten years into its existence, Humble Beast had changed, both in terms of its structure and format.

“Equipping creatives” has always been at the heart of what Humble Beast does, but historically that vision hasn’t always felt clear to the outside world.

SOLUTION

Before we began, we needed to clearly understand what Humble Beast is at its core — in order to find the best ways to communicate its mission.

Rather than rebranding or completely revamping the entire organization, we sought to bring Humble Beast’s mission into sharp focus, thus helping guide the team going forward.

In order to once again, activate the Humble Beast brand we brought clear messaging to their brand and launched a brand new site to communicate its new positioning and vision.

Phase 2

Brand Building

Brand Identity

With clarity as our driving force, we applied that quite literally when it came to the logo. We cleaned up Humble Beast’s wordmark by increasing the space between each letter to make it more legible.

Another word we used to anchor ourselves was minimal — we wanted to focus only on what is essential. As a result, we removed the period from the Humble Beast wordmark, subtly simplifying it.

Finally, we updated the font used in the wordmark, swapping out the 1983 version of Helvetica for the 2019 version, quietly indicating that Humble Beast continues to evolve, while still staying true to its mission.

Helvetica Neue (1983)

Helvetica Now (2020)

After some in-depth conversations, we ran into a helpful analogy, the analogy of a museum.

When you visit a museum or a gallery, you admire and learn from the curated pieces the museum puts on display. You learn about and enjoy both the art and the artist. That, we realized, is how Humble Beast should present itself to its viewers. Humble Beast exists to present a curated list of “makers” who are excellent in their craft and strongly committed to Christian Orthodoxy.

We came to the conclusion that visually, Humble Beast must remain minimal and subdued. The brand does not aim to bring attention to itself but to feature content and artists in a manner that is both faithful and humble — a value front and center in the brand’s name.

PHASE 3

Brand Experience

Motion Design

We had the pleasure of partnering with one of our clients, Ordinary Folk, a motion-design studio in Vancouver, BC, to help us determine how the Humble Beast brand should move.

Inspired by the museum metaphor, the resulting piece uses moving lines to depict a frame, visually echoing the frames which contain the paintings in a museum.

Website

As we approached the development and design of the new Humble Beast site, we realized this would be the crowning jewel of the rebrand effort, since the website functions as the most tangible representation of Humble Beast’s new vision.

In light of the site’s importance, we were deeply intentional in every aspect of development, from overall strategy and site mapping to user experience and visual design. And the clean, fresh, minimal approach won the day for Humble Beast. We expanded the visual direction’s lines and clear blocks of content to help effectively communicate what the brand offers, who’s involved, and how to join in.