The strength of our business has always been built on delivering results for our clients first. Sure, we invest in Backbone in a big way annually, but to be honest we have never made it priority #1 to promote ourselves or overly focus on our brand. To this point, it is far easier and more genuine to tell another brand’s story rather than focus on talking about oneself. This client centric approach has served us well. New business has always been driven by great word-of-mouth recommendations from our clients, our agency partners and our friends in the industry.
However, 2014 marks a change. Our original logo designed in 1997, by our then shared-office graphic artist friends at Rainy Day Designs, has been a solid one for us. The history of the logo – a stylized yin of the Continental Divide, the backbone of the Rockies running through the heart of the state of Colorado, is being retired in favor of a more modern, bold mark with a hint of western design.
If you have ever run a new logo/design process it can be PAINFUL. It took over a year and we mangled more than one design team relationship. Internally, it was near contentious at times, bordering on combative and hilarity. Funny, because at first blush most people seem to care little about a logo or fonts, but if you dig just a bit deeper – oh, it gets real. As always, we persevered, trusted the process and each other and now are happy. For ideas on logo design and guidance check this.
You may notice the B’s have a peaked center that represent the twin summits of Mount Sopris, the noble peak that sits above Carbondale. The new Backbone logo is bold, clean and strong. I won’t get into some of the descriptors given about how the line below represents a continuum and progress in a static form. I mean, some of the stuff our graphic artist pals spun makes even the most flowery PR language look pretty tame.
Big call out to Fred Hammerquist and his team for helping shepard us through this process. We like Fred. We collaborate together on a few brands. Rumor has it when the snow is deep he skis on Megawatts. Thanks to Fred and his team.
Onward!