Visual Identity Meinhart GmbH

Project details

For this Graz-based loc­al hard­ware store, we provided a new visual identity for their over­all use. The aim was to pre­serve the well-known store name and the as­so­ci­ated typeface logo in the new design. So the dif­fi­culty was, to merge the col­or range of the old logo and ex­tract the im­port­ant de­velop­able parts of the logo. After ana­lyz­ing the old ap­pear­ance we de­cided, that the font VAG and the cap­it­al M are the fun­da­ment­al parts of the logo and worth be­ing trans­formed in­to a new con­tem­por­ary visu­al­ity.

The first step was to change the font VAG, which was de­signed for Volk­swa­gen in 1979 by a mod­ern al­tern­at­ive. We de­cided to come up with the roun­ded Ver­sion of FF DIN, which was drawn in 2010. The FF DIN Roun­ded meets our re­quire­ments of ty­po­graphy in this pro­ject and is a good con­nec­tion to the old ty­po­graphy.

Then we dis­solved the M‑shape out of the old lo­go’s back­ground and bring it to the fore­ground. It was im­port­ant for us to re­draw the out­line based on the cap­it­al glyph M of DIN Roun­ded and give it a few in­di­vidu­al changes in de­tail. The res­ult was the »Meinhart M«, which is re­lated to the font and has its own pro­file.

We reduced the number of colors to four, an orange and dark green for the cooperative Bau-Ring, a light green stands for ADEG, a grocery shop within the store, and black as a neutral color, which holds everything together. This kind of rainbow builds a flexible graphic element in upcoming tasks and can be placed in multiple proportions and scalings.

So finally the »Meinhart M«, the new typeface, and the four-colored rainbow form the basic ingredients of the new design. Every visual product for the future will be based on a flexible layout with these few pieces. To establish a new appearance to customers, it's important to communicate the formal and typography-based style strongly in the future.

After the establishing process, a second step can be followed by additional actions to strengthen the custom relation.

Client: Franz Meinhart GmbH
Design and Art Direction: Alexander Grimm
Typeface: FF DIN Round