Following the acquisition of Wood's largest rival Amec Foster Wheeler, leadership wanted to create a completely new visual identity that would welcome new and existing employees. The other objective of the refresh was to differentiate us from other typically oil and gas related businesses as Wood following the acquisition was now operating in almost all major industrial sectors with a workforce of 40,000+ employees in 60 countries.
Sometimes clients want a long story as to how the designer arrives at the form. For this brand exercise Wood's leadership had a simple story they wanted told "Three becoming one" or "The power of three" in reference to the three largest business units coming together to form the new company.
I wanted straight away to keep it a simple word mark that reflected the simplicity of the name. This mono, geometric simplicity would allow for the mark to never feel pigeonholed in a specific industry, a great benefit to a company now everywhere. We wanted to avoid using the traditional hard hat style imager and opt for relevant and visually compelling imagery.
The dot on the spur of the D was my simple way of adding a little unique characteristic to the mark whilst simultaneously emphasizing the simplicity of the name. Wood.
Initial concepts were around abstract elements of the logo itself, paired with compelling imagery and tasteful color sampling. This approach i felt would offer unique visual interactions with the brand at touch points.
The abstract acted as a way of centering the design, framing the image and pulling out the contrasting colors.
I decided pretty quickly that we needed to move away from the circular abstracts as they were constraining the design too much. I still believed in the color sampling though and that we needed to allow the imagery to really shine through. We started to look into simple offset squares and rectangles of complimenting colors.
The same subject matter. The same visual language.
But by careful selection of colors, the tone and feeling of each experience to the viewer is unique.
