Juan Delgado retired from the military and started on a new career. With his storied military career, he had no desire to let go of what had become his family…other service members and their families. When Juan joined Keller Williams South Sound, he knew immediately his real estate business would serve his military families two fold. First, Juan knows very well the struggles with finding housing as quickly as possible for incoming service member families and what it means to sell quickly and easily when it’s time to PCS again. (PCS means, permanent change of station, which means moving from one base to another every 2-3 years.) Second, Juan wants to help ease the career transition for his military brothers and sisters. It’s quite daunting for those whose careers were only in the military. The civilian world is quite the change of unstructured pace. From the enlisted to the commissioned, Juan’s service is to give back to the community he served so proudly.

Interpretation & Translation

Juan’s next challenge was convey all of this with his brand identity (more of a challenge for me rather than him). Being familiar with the military myself, I was eager to find unique ways to create a meaningful logo mark that would say it all. That said, you can find 10 real estate agents on every corner. So many of those use some form of a house in their logos. (Note to self: Houses are overdone.) However, it is immediately easy to understand the business. I’m not a fan of using “house” or “home” in the name and using an obvious visual of the same. It’s redundant, cheeky, and not unique at all.

Researching the Military

I first sifted through the various emblems and military imagery just to see what design elements I may already have access to. I played with the bronze star medal the most. Of course, it too is obvious and would be redundant with his name. I held onto that concept thinking there’d be a way to manipulate them into something less obvious but meaningful. That meant I had a star and a ribbon that hold the star.

I looked at ranks on sleeves and lapels. I examined unit/company patches. I examined other patriot symbols, like the flag, Statue of Liberty, and the bald eagle. The elements that stood out were the enlisted stripes/chevrons on the sleeves of the dress blue uniforms and the star for the medal, which also would double as the commissioned General’s rank.

Iterations

I initially had a box enclosure around the name and used a stack of three chevrons to act as the chimney. It was a little less obvious–slightly more abstract. I tried the predictable star in the “a” position. (Sometimes, you have to execute even the ideas you know are bad in order to get them out of your head. They can also lead to something else, so it’s never a bad idea to create the bad idea.) The results were all nice enough but plain and predictable.

When I moved onto the shape of the ribbon for the medal, I rotated it and noticed looked like a house. Oops! But, when I moved the 3-stacked chevrons inside, the logo quickly evolved. Beautiful!

Details

We used Helvetica Condensed andHelvetica Light for the logo type to tie it more closely to the Keller Williams logo. The navy blue for trust was sampled from the jacket of the dress blues uniform.

It’s subtly a home, obviously military, and very regal. The mark is one that would look excellent on Polo shirts, hats, nice jackets, etc.