One of my first jobs when I started as Art Director at Fargo-based marketing company, Sundog, was to develop a new logo for a nearby tool and die shop. Performance Tool & Die needed something sleek that represented precision and professionalism. This is what eventually came of the project. Their original logo had the crosshairs, and I didn’t feel they needed to go. It was a nice, easy way of bringing the precision aspect of the business into play.
But how do I portray the underlying personality of not only the company but the folks that make it up? That’s where the typeface comes in. I wanted it to look as if deriving from a classic, timeless vehicle. I wanted it to look like it was ripped right off the back of a car from a time period when they actually had personality and to own one was to love and care for one, because that’s what you could see in the faces of these employees that worked hard and cared about what they did.
