Located in Winnipeg, Roost Custom Builders is a contracting and building company located in Winnipeg, Manitoba. With a signature slogan of "building better people places," their work prioritizes carbon-conscious high efficiency building envelopes and close collaboration with their clients. They create highly specialized living spaces, wether through renovations, home additions, or entire home builds from scratch.
I was hired to refresh Roost's logo, create a new unified brand look, and build a new website and a number of print materials. Roost's website was on its last legs, and a number of refreshed print materials would be needed ahead of the launch of their 4212 Roblin show house project, a watershed proof of concept for Roost's creative design thinking, energy efficiency ambitions, and contracting excellence.
Aesthetically, the new design would need to preserve the fundamental impression of the original logo and the iconic roosting bird symbol. Roost's need for simple client editting meant that a Squarespace site would be the best long-term solution for a website.
With the client, we decided it would be best to work an updated logo first, followed by a squarespace site design. Because a squarespace template would present the most constraints, it would make sense to do print brochures last, given we could more easily match the design of a brochure to the squarespace site than the other way around
Fortunately for Roost, the basic idea behind the logo was distinct and remained fresh.
However, the use of type was weak and in need of updating (note the original "R" curves at the center and crossbar on the "S"), and detailed analysis also revealed that the original glyphs in the logotype were not lined up and needed to be fixed.
Topped off with new type
The refresh involved fixing and softening the R and S in the logo, pulling the bird closer.
The final iteration of the logo refresh combines the open source typeface "D-DIN" with the new graphic in handful of useful configurations, also creating a standard for the company's signature slogan, "building better people spaces."
Prior to the creation of a website and materials, I conducted multiple photoshoots of Roost in action at multiple job sites, in particular at the Roblin show house.
This work included an extensive staged family shoot at the Roblin with one of the families of one of Roost's owner/operators, Jaron Friesen.
To maximize the potential for design consistency across the new brand, I created concepts around the most constrained instance of the brand - a squarespace website. New type and colour approaches were laid atop a few squarespace templates alongside a corresponding approach to typography in an updated version of the logo. With a selected site format, it would be easy to ensure consistency when creating more complex and detailed graphics.
Chronologically, these site concepts were paired with logos and were pitched together and selected as pairs. Concept 1 and 2 feature the typefaces Brandon Grotesque and Niveau Grotesk. When Concept 3 was selected as a final, it mean selecting D-Din as both principal type for the site and for the logo going forward.
With these photos and new branded assets in hand, Concept 3 was selected and became the basis for the built website, which you can see at www.roostcustombuilders.ca
Roost's brand new show home at 4212 Roblin is the culmination of many years of performing custom home renovations for families, and the company had planned a formal launch party in 2019 to which family, friends, and potential interested clients were invited to see Roost' crafstmanship and design skill applied start to finish and top to bottom.
The brochure was completed in a very short turnaround due to a last minute time crunch on Roost's part, but stands nonetheless as a demonstration of the new brand's ability to elevate Roost's excellent work.
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