Lore

Nest Realty Group: A New Breed of Broker

Late last Friday night (January 30) we ushered a new brand, and a new Web presence, into the world and the Central Virginia community: Nest Realty Group.

Home Page
Home Page

Nest Realty’s founder, Jonathan Kauffmann, originally approached us with a simple (on the surface) idea: the old real estate brokerage model is broken, and they represent a new breed of broker.

From that idea, combined with some of the latest research on what works and what doesn’t with real estate Web sites/interactive efforts, we worked closely to refine that idea into a brand and an interactive presence.

In the next few days we’ll dive deeper into those ideas and how the project came to life, but for today, we wanted to review how the identity came to life in the form of the logo, tagline, fonts, and colors.

Crafting an Identity

We don’t claim to be a logo/identity shop. We usually rely on outside agencies to help drive the logo/identity work, and then we bring it to life on the Web.

But when time is short, the budget is tight, and we need to refine a look or craft something new, we’ve got a creative team that is able to step up to the challenge.

Our creative team – led by DW and JC took a stab at the effort. Jonathan already had a great tagline in “Live Where You Love.” We loved the idea of a Nest, and presented a couple of options with a literal and not-so-literal approach. Here was the top contender after round one.

First Identity Option
First Identity Option

But we had one more trick up the sleeve. We really wanted to incorporate a character we could use throughout the site. Here is the finished product.

Final Logo/Identity
Final Logo/Identity

This was the choice for a number of reasons:

  • It wasn’t stock – the bird was unique and couldn’t be found anywhere else
  • It was more refined – a professional feel important to a new brand
  • It could used beyond the web with two, three, or more colors. Important for keeping printing costs low on real estate signs, business cards, and letterhead

As part of the final work for the identity, we presented the font and color palette that would drive the Web and print efforts below. Make sure to stay tuned – we’ll have a series of posts on the work to bring the rest of the project to life.

Final fonts and colors
Final fonts and colors