Bull & Partners
Every once in a while, a whole bunch of work gets done, but for a whole bunch of reasons, it never gets to live in the world. For ourselves, and for the often amazing, unsung players that put tons of effort into these projects, we dedicate a new category here at Rabe & Co: The Fresh Kill.
Our first entry: Bull & Partners. The slick, young, fun and fancy-free team at Manhattan’s now-closed Bull-White House Ad Agency hired us to take them from their existing name to just “Bull & Partners” and to work with their previous slogan “Where you’re safe from safe” to simply “Safe from Safe.”
Their old brand ID was fun, but dark: illustrated gas masks, bombs, etc. They even had a room in the office called The Bunker. The new ask was for something more fun. Brighter and lighter. It should still rally the troops, so to speak, but with less, well… reference to violence.
So we developed a new visual system that explored more mischievous, childlike definitions of danger. We tapped classic, cautionary symbolism and crossed it with the kind of badges a brave young scout might wear with honor. We looked at shapes. Then ditched shapes. We made the icons big and proud on flags. We buried them in type lock-ups on letterhead. We played with color. Radioactive, hyper yellows and reds. Softer, more “highlighter’y” palettes. We were havin’ fun, y’all.
Wow, I’m writing a lot about this. Probably because months and months and rounds of iterations of every little idea went into this work. Lots of LOVE and consideration went in to the reinvention of this agency. And it was all done on schedule. Timed perfectly to coincide with the formal announcement of the new name + management change. Only to find out, right along side our in-house team, that instead of newness, there would be closed-ness. The Bull-White House officially shut its doors in July.
Apologies + high fives if you’ve read this far. It’s our first post in a very important category! If you’re a creative in this industry, you know allllll about work that dies, and it’s a tough pill to swallow. But an important one to learn how to navigate. On that note, we’re featuring and sharing this work with crazy pride. Pride we share with the awesome team at BWH that brought us on and saw it all through as far as they could.
On to the next one.
Samples from six different rounds of creative exploratory, in rough chronology, are featured here. Click to advance through each slider as you scroll.
