Our Very Own Brand Reveal
Tomorrow is our 5th birthday, or maybe it’s our 5-year anniversary…anyway…The Spark Mill is 5! What better way to celebrate than to officially reveal our sexy new brand?! Those super perceptive folks may have noticed the slight changes in palette and font over the last month but as of today, it is official.
Since May 1, 2013, when TSM officially got a desk in a co-working space so much has happened. We’ve grown from one consultant to a five-person firm, we’ve moved into our own building, and we’ve expanded our work – in the types of clients we work with, the types of projects we do, and the geographic area in which we regularly do business.
Much of our work centers around helping clients recognize their own opportunities for growth and change. Often that includes identifying when the story they are telling about themselves no longer captures who they are or what they are doing in the world. Somewhere around the first of the year TSM team realized we were closing in on that moment ourselves. When Sarah started this company back in 2013 she worked with a few talented friends to help her craft a brand that represented her vision. It was perfect and lovely and served The Spark Mill well for many years and there will always be nostalgia around that first iteration of TSM. Now that vision has been cultivated and nurtured into reality and a new vision has emerged.
We reached out to our super talented friends at Campfire & Co. who asked us some questions and genuinely listened to our answers - even when we didn't all answer the same. They brought us a draft with a few variations of what they heard, and listened again as we talked through what we liked, what felt right, and what didn't. We did this one more time and they had pretty much nailed it. As we sat with them and chatted about one last tweak, they began to sketch in their notebook and we watched our words and half formed ideas manifest into the perfect graphics right there at the table! Campfire helped capture who The Spark Mill is now and where we are heading as they worked with our team to turn TSM into shapes and colors and fonts and precisely hand-drawn letters. We get to watch them work with other organizations on the regular – but having the opportunity to be their client was magical and so much fun!
We feel inspired and whole again, now that our work, our vision, and our brand are in alignment. Our brand may have a fresh new look, but don’t worry, our core beliefs haven’t wavered.
Change shouldn’t be boring, the process is just as important as the final product, the plan is yours not ours, and there are no one-size-fits-all boilerplate solutions.