The Curio Collective 3.0(ish) – Part 1

It dawned on me about a year and a half ago that we were approaching our 10th year of business at The Curio Collective. I was pretty taken aback. Part of me couldn’t believe it was going to be 10 years already, the other part of me remembers all too well the blood, sweat and tears (sometimes lots) that we’ve poured into this business. It’s been quite the journey filled with unbelievably fulfilling highs, and pretty dark lows.

But here we are. The Curio Collective is still here and I’m more excited and passionate about the future of our business than ever before. As I look back on the past 10 years, I see so many blessings. I see provision that defies explanation. I see fulfillment and joy on a level that have brought me to tears on more than one occasion.

The vision for our business and how we want to serve our clients has changed a lot over the past few years. Ashley and I both agreed that as our new vision and mission solidified, what better way to inaugurate that new direction and celebrate the past 10 years than to rebrand The Curio Collective. In this 3 part blog series we’ll give you a behind the scenes look at how we got here.

Buckle up, here we go.

A Refreshed Vision

Over the past 5 or so years, we’ve collectively experienced some pretty monumental shifts in our lives (and consequently our business). After our son was born in the middle of a global pandemic, we realized we needed to fundamentally change the way we were not only “doing business”, but also how we viewed the very purpose and mission of our business.

A growing desire to serve our clients in a bigger way (other than just building good and helpful websites) began to form. We wanted to be able to come alongside other small businesses like us and truly use our gifts and talents to help. We wanted to become a trusted partner to help them get to where they dream of going, while supporting and rejoicing with them along the way. We wanted to truly live out the theme Bible verse for our business: “Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them.” – Ephesians 4:29 (NLT). We are uniquely positioned to empathise with other small businesses, because we’re one too.

But to do that well, we realized it was going to require more than just creating a logo or a website for our clients. It was going to take vision, planning, strategy and most of all, being more than just a vendor to execute a task. It was going to take building trusted relationships where we intimately understand each of our clients target audience and company vision.

Same Name, New Brand

As we developed this new vision for our business, we knew that our old branding wasn’t going to cut it. After all, our core website was 7 years old (still looked and functioned great though!). And our old messaging wasn’t going to cut it either. It was going to take clearly telling our audience not just what services we offer, but exactly how we can help them get to where they dream of taking their business.

This new messaging needed a timeless, authentic, strategic, and memorable brand identity that represented it perfectly.

Creating A Brand Mark

As we started the process of creating a brand mark, early on we decided to stick with a monogram. There’s just something about the simplicity and timelessness of a monogram. Then we did a LOT of sketches, then did some more sketches, then digitized those sketches, then tweaked them some more. We wanted to create a mark that was simple enough to be legible at a small size and easily understood, while also being interesting and original to create a timeless, memorable icon.

We used the letter forms “CCo” combined together to create 3 concentric circles nestled together to create one cohesive form. The 3 concentric circles are symbolic of community and completeness. There is also this idea of two uneven, unequal, and separate parts coming together and connecting to create one unified shape. This speaks to Ashley and I’s marriage and business partnership, but also our desire to create branding that connects with people for our clients.

In part 2 of our rebranding deep dive, we’ll show you how we created a fully custom, one-off font for our new brand identity logo system.

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