Revamping a historical denim mill by going back to its roots
Background
Founded in 1958 as a cotton mill in Xing Tai City, located in China's Hebei province, Blue Diamond originally produced yarn dye check fabrics. In 1996, Blue Diamond switched to denim and specialised in manufacturing timeless denim fabrics since.
They partnered with a denim consultancy in Los Angeles, House of Gold, to help them to navigate around the Western market. The denim consultancy advised them to go through a branding makeover before introducing them to their new market.
INQOVA developed a complete brand visual identity for the domestic Chinese denim manufacturer to further position itself as a modern denim manufacturer that is ready to embrace the Western market.
Approach
Blue Diamond is certain to keep their current diamond logomark during the discovery session: the blue brand colour represents the core of Blue Diamond and its name. Despite that, they still want to see an evolution of their brand to look more suited for modern times.
Their previous logo was a combination of their wordmark in Copperplate and a centred small diamond logo that is not adaptable on different medium, particularly small design environments such as social media icons, website and small print canvas.
Solution
The House of Gold and Blue Diamond team are very sure about the new brand visual concept direction. They want the new visuals to be modern and playful but still keeping it professional. We then strike a balance by creating a clean and minimalistic layout and pairing it with vibrant and dynamic colours synonymous with the denim industry.
Blue is the colour that represents the DNA of denim, and most denim related brands use it, be it B2C and manufacturing brands. However, blue comes less monotonous when it is paired with its complementary colour, orange. Besides being a complementary colour, orange is also widely used in denim products as the yarns that seam denim fabrics together to create a denim garment.
When crafting Blue Diamond's identity, we want to bring something to the visuals that is widely known by the denim industry and also the core of denim, so we go through the denim process making step by step and later discovered about the dyeing method.
The denim-making process that denim people only know is that the denim dye is not blue, but it's green. Denim gets its blue from multiple dyeing dips and oxidation. The process is almost like a gradient of green transitioning to blue. We blend this core process into the identity by using the green and blue gradient as unique colour accents for brand graphics such as banners and posters.
Result
Blue Diamond brand identity makeover transformed itself not just as a brand that is ready to take on a new market but also a brand that is deeply in touch with its production roots and a global brand with an adaptable identity for different markets.
