Project Description
The Company
Wisdom Stone is a new cabinet hardware brand for a stylish, value-conscious consumer. It’s a family-owned company that wants to make it fun and affordable to bring signature style to the home, without breaking the bank.
The Challenge
The cabinet hardware industry is somewhat traditional, led by large, well-established companies. Since Wisdom Stone is anything but traditional, they needed branding with a unique approach and strong differentiators to carve out their turf as an affordable fashion line.
Strategy & Process
Wisdom Stone partnered with Flux Appeal to help them build core messaging, a positioning strategy and identity system. We performed a good bit of discovery and workshopping to pin down the organization’s character, researched competitors, and got familiar with the market in order to whittle down a solid approach for positioning. 
The Identity
Wisdom Stone already had a trademarked logo, so the remaining visual elements sprang from this starting point. We wanted to make it clear that, although it’s a value brand, Wisdom Stone’s hardware is beautifully-designed and sturdy, which is reflected in the logo design and typographic choices. Purple conveys luxury, and a greek key reflects the family’s heritage. The motif does double-duty, communicating strength and style while providing contrast to the delicate forms in the logo.
The client wanted a fresh, fun visual approach that would highlight the fashion aspect of the hardware, so we developed a fairly liberal secondary color system to provide options as their line increases. The colors comprise mostly jewel tones, as many of the hardware items contain colored crystals.
To provide even greater visual range, we added a library of patterns and geometric borders that can be mixed and matched to adapt with the variety in their product line. This system keeps it fun and fashionable, and allows for the creation of mini-vignettes to be used on social media and other digital channels.
Collateral
The cover of Wisdom Stone’s gate fold brochure features doors with a set of pulls that open onto shelves of products, and the catalogue utilizes the knob grid that was developed for their brand book. We hope to be adding more collateral pieces in the future.
The collaborative essence of the folks at Wisdom Stone made this project a joy to work on, and they ended up with a brand that feels like home. Keep an eye on Wisdom Stone, products become available in summer of 2016!
