We just completed a refresh of Cook Street Liquor’s logo. Earlier this year our favourite shop for beer and whiskey dropped ‘Village’ from its name so it was time for an update, but the owner also wanted to find a way to personalize the logo for different markets — branding that emphasized their great craft beer selection for music audiences at the Rifflandia festival, for instance, and something that trumpeted their specialty wines in glossy magazines.

One of the challenges was working with the existing wordmark — the client wanted to keep the same typeface and basic layout so that retail signage could be retained — but at the same time modernize a bit and make the logo stronger. We suggested creating a logo family with a strong central element that remains unchanged, set into two different badges like this: the client can pick the logo depending on their target audience.