Galesburg, Illinois CVB Rebrand

Galesburg, Illinois CVB was ready for a refresh. Their previous brand embraced Galesburg’s historical past and love of all things railroads, but that’s not all they have to offer. Galesburg is full of beautiful architecture, a vibrant downtown, top-notch breweries and a crazy amount of delicious food. The client was looking for a logo and branding system that spoke to these things as well. Like any logo, it is hard to get everything a location is known for in a tight, esthetically pleasing logo. But by simplifying these elements down, I was able to achieve a logo and brand the client and area was very happy with.

I took inspiration from the art-deco style architecture to develop a simple line work logo. At the top of the logo, there is an icon resembling a train track, or a stained-glass window, both appropriate for Galesburg. The “badge” shape of the logo itself takes some inspiration the craft beer labels found in their local breweries. The entire logo has a trendy but still mature enough feel to appeal to a wide variety of audiences and age groups. The logo system consists of a horizontal version, in both the blue and green color schemes, and a simplified circular version in those colors as well. After completing the logo system for the CVB, the Parks and Recreation department along with the Chamber of Commerce decided to follow suit and redesign their logos to match in a cohesive system.

Galesburg CVB Website

Once the brand and logo were established, the CVB asked for their website to be redesigned to match their new look.

The client wanted their website to be fun and dynamic, something that really stood out from your typical tourism website. I worked with our developers to design a website that was not only functional and easy for the visitor to use, but also impactful and memorable. The design features a healthy amount of animation and interaction with the user along with a business directory we designed for Galesburg specifically. The site is currently being developed and will launch late 2019.

Galesburg CVB Experience Guide

Galesburg CVB also wanted to re-vamp their visitors guide into something more along the lines of a magazine. In order to achieve this, we started over from scratch – reshooting images, interviewing local business owners for fresh content and eliminating ads from the guide all together. The goal was for this piece to be something so nice that the visitor would want to hang on to it, and not throw it away when they were done reading. The new “Experience Guide” includes interesting stories of local business owners, fun info graphics and recipes along with impactful photography and easy to consume content.

In the first week of having the guides in hand, the CVB had given out 75% to local businesses and the response from the businesses and the visitors was overwhelmingly positive. The second edition is currently in the works.