Hudson Woods Branding Case Study

Introduction

Imagine a cabin-in-the-woods type vacation house, but with tons of space, high quality materials, and modern design at every turn. This is Hudson Woods, a cool new development in the Catskill Mountains, just two hours north of NYC. 

The set of twenty-seven homes at Hudson Woods blend seamlessly with the natural surroundings, offering a new type of getaway; a creative person's dream.

The Challenge

These sleek, eco-friendly homes are targeted towards successful New York creatives who want to get away to a quiet, natural environment but still be surrounded by elegant design. The challenge was to come up with a brand that felt modern enough to captivate the audience, but conservative enough to be appropriate for a real estate development.

Concept

The concept for the logo stemmed from a similar idea - “design meets nature”.

Through my iterative process, I aimed to strike a balance between visual novelty and functionality.

I was particularly inspired by the wood-casting furniture designed by Hilla Shamia. She fuses raw, natural tree trunks with cast aluminum to create clean, geometric pieces. The contrast of chaos and structure paired perfectly with the concept of the modern homes blending into the nature surrounding them.

I designed the logo itself to blend from the organic lines of a tree trunk into a structured serif letterform "h".

During the logo refinement stage, I worked to find the balance between visual novelty and legibility, resulting in a balanced final logo.