Design inspiration can come from everywhere … even from vintage kitchenware.
As part of a brand overhaul soon to be revealed, our designers took cues from all sorts of unlikely sources. Their directives were to create an organic look and feel that was still fresh, modern, and translates what the client does with both style and clarity.
As ideas began to fly and evolve, our offices started to resemble an old New England marketplace: the work table was suddenly festooned with bittersweet, holly, and brambles from the nearby woods. Pomegranates and breadfruits were suspiciously cleaved in half on the kitchen counter, and wooden butter molds replaced paper weights on a desk or two.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BL1drsNhPx9/ A photo posted by Winstanley Partners (@winstanleylenox) on
While the prevailing concept has moved away a bit from these visuals, they were important steps in the process, and we even learned a thing or two. Take those butter molds for instance… from the top, they look like nondescript little doorknobs. But on their underside, they’re carved with intricate designs. Also known as butter stamps, these early examples of gadgetry originated in the 17th century and remained in regular use into the 20th century.
They were purposely decorative, but an example of an early branding tool, too — farmers carved or commissioned their own unique stamps to differentiate their butter from that of their neighbors. Common designs were thistles, pineapples, stars, and (shocker) cows.
Stay tuned for what butter molds, bittersweet, and breadfruit eventually became.