Well, we just finished up a complete identity redesign for local green cleaning company, Two Bettys, and thought we would put together a good ol’ American process thread about the whole thing. We will be posting about a stage in the process every day this week, culminating with the final outcome on Friday.

Two Bettys Green Cleaning Service is Minneapolis-based, and serves the twin cities area. Our first connection to the company was through Anna Tsantir, owner and proprietor of Two Bettys, whom we came to know when she was working with the Minnesota Center for the Book Arts (MCBA.) Aesthetic Apparatus had some wholesale  prints in their shop and we had also participated in a few events at the space. Anna, being a fellow printmaker herself, kept in touch once in a while and dropped us a line when her new venture, Two Bettys, really started growing. It’s just more evidence that you never know where or who your next project will come from. This is not an argument for “networking”, it is a defense of contributing to a “community.” Know everyone you want to know, and support them.

So, in late 2009 Anna and her business partner Sam came to us with a poster project for Two Bettys and questions about a potential “total makeover”, although they weren’t sure if that was something we could/would do. The original Two Bettys poster that Anna and Sam had designed and printed is below. We agreed to take on the poster immediately and coordinated a timeline on a full make-over for 2010, including posters, identity, website, promotional materials, and everything in between.

Anna and Sam felt that they had a lot of loyalty and recognition with the name Two Bettys, many customers commented often about how they enjoyed the name. We agreed that the name invoked a casual and playful attitude that you don’t tend to see in a lot of green industries. So many green-focused companies seem to focus on serious, even severe, political social ideas within their green brands. With Two Bettys, they had already integrated the idea of green, but expanded it back into their own approach towards work and life. They wanted to create an impression of a green company that was definitely more personal and human. Their existing logo mark was a tasteful-yet-racy woodcut of an iconic Betty Grable portrait, printed twice on top of itself. Although Two Bettys had employed this mark since their inception, they weren’t sure that it really spoke to what they did, nor were we sure that it was even fair-use. The literal interpretation seemed a bit obvious, and they worried that the combination of image and name might also be sending a confusing message.

The temporary posters and ad designs didn’t require any new thinking at this point, they just needed to be stand-ins until a new identity could be rolled out. Although with these pieces we were already trying to figure out how to reconcile the name, the image and the idea of green in one image. Poster and ad redesigns below:

The above poster was printed along with calling cards, two-sided (3-over-1), trimmed and folded with grommets to create pockets for the cards.

TOMORROW: INITIAL LOGO SKETCHES & PRESENTATION