Why We Changed Our Logo

Everything got the sticky note treatment, from our logistics to our brand personality. - ATW

I felt that one of the branding breakthroughs was when I did a deep analysis of the language we used in our program, including the word “fellowship.” Why not “accelerator” or “incubator?” When I looked “fellowship” up in dictionaries, two definitions stood out to me, and I immediately copied them down. This is a selection from an early page of our internal brand book, and I believe gives context for our work. - AJT

We’ve had the pleasure of working with Harlin Miller, an amazing New Orleans based photographer, for the past few years. Harlin did our most recent batch of headshots, and we enjoyed the challenge of coming up with our two different headshot versions. Here are a few alternates we loved but didn’t end up picking as our main photos. What do you think of our choices? - AJT

Friends and fam — we’re excited to share with you our new look: Camelback has a new logo, color scheme, and website. For the past few months, our team has taken time to review our work for the past few years, including our recently completed 2016 Fellowship. We closely examined everything from our workshops to our company values to our email signatures. During this process, we decided to go through a brand redefinition.

We took a close look at what we believed Camelback has stood for previously, and what we wanted it to stand for moving forward. This was an intensive project, with many weeks spent in rooms with sticky notes covered in adjectives, flow charts of font types, and pyramids of color options. We did activities, cut versions, reconsidered said cuts, scrapped whole drafts, and started anew. We even considered a name change, albeit very briefly. Our process resulted in a logo with new typography (if you remember, on our old logo, we had Camelback in a serif font and ventures in a sans serif).

Our brand redefinition also brought with it new colors: Camelback Teal, nicknamed Tenacity, is a rich, warm river green-blue that connotes modern confidence and compassion; Camelback Gold, Noble, highlights our belief in the excellence of collective genius as well as the sunny warmth found in our fellowship. Teal and gold are also subtle homages to our organization’s hometown, New Orleans. Camelback Charcoal, Intersection, reminds us of the power of connection - not just among the people, but also how race, class and gender overlap in ways that matter for how we approach the work. And how social impact is not just about a singular challenge, but the intersectionality of education, economic opportunity and the environment.

We love our new look, and we hope you do, too — tell us what you think on our contact page on the revamped website. The site is a house for our new brand, and also readies us to share the stories we want to tell. As a team, we analyzed the best (and worst) parts of our old site and began to work on an overhaul. We tested different landing pages and menu hierarchies. We took new headshots, and sorted through the our favorites. After weeks of hard work, we went live with the site you see today.

The application for the 2017 Camelback Fellowship opens next Monday on October 24, so please share our new website with anyone you think may be a good fit for our program.

Thanks everyone, and stay woke.

- Amanda and Aaron

Amanda Tien is Camelback's Creative Director. Aaron T. Walker is Camelback’s CEO and Founder.