bellewether partners
DeRose & Appelbaum was an established mid-sized San Francisco based commercial real estate firm.  They came to us in 2018 to create an entirely new brand that powerfully reflects the disruptive, creative brand they are today.
Maven (formerly DeRose & Appelbaum) handles sales, leasing, investing and property management in San Francisco. Their new brand needed to resonate with all types of clients from local independent businesses to International institutions and also communicate their breadth and depth of knowledge, passion and creativity. Like in many cases, we were limited on time but able to efficiently build their strategic brand platform which then led to design and communications.
Brand strategy
We began by creating a brand platform that powerfully reflects the new brand as well as the business and team as they both grow.
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Competitive and inspirational brand audits were instrumental to uncover white space for the new brand.
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We had numerous collaborative work sessions and brainstorms with the team.
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Naming
A new name was needed to accurately the newly created brand platform.
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We developed naming criteria, brief and assembled the team, including the clients, to ultimately land on "maven".
design
We then embarked on the logo and visual system for Maven.
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We created design brief, led conceptual development, design reviews and recommended evolution and optimizations of designs.
Before & After
Before
Previous logo featured a bright orange, unique and memorable
Previous name didn't reflect the diversity and creativity of the team and approach
After
Name more effectively communicates creative expert and stands out amongst the dozens of commercial competitors,
Font for Maven was inspired by upscale fashion and design brands
Lower case was chosen for Maven to be more approachable
Complementary block font was used to balance seriousness and approachability
We also explored highlighting the "ave" part of "maven" given its connection with real estate but ultimately preferred how "maven" read without
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