BRAND IDENTITY

McCarthy Building Company

Brand identity for a national construction company.

Established in 1864, McCarthy is a national construction company known for operational excellence and maximizing client outcomes with lasting results and superior value.

Approaching the company’s 150-year anniversary, McCarthy sought to re-establish themselves in the commercial construction category, bringing to light their mission of true, communal partnership. I was brought on to complete a brand identity refresh to help visualize and streamline all 14 nationwide offices.

Brand Strategy / Brand Identity / Illustration / Web Design / Print Collateral

PRIMARY MARK

The Bar and Dude

Technically, McCarthy has two logos — The Red Bar and The Dude. After many focus groups, we found a massive amount of brand equity in both, so we moved forward with the Red Bar becoming the primary mark and The Dude becoming secondary.

For The Red Bar, I kerned and lead the letters evenly, increasing readability in various sizes, primarily mobile. For The Dude, I simplified the amount of pointillism-like colors from 34 to 6. The Dude was also designed to be both gender, race, and age neutral.

Though exclusively recognizable, we made sure both The Dude and The Red Bar could be used together. We also discovered font families and color palettes that enhanced and complemented each mark.

PUTTING IT TOGETHER

Then we built an identity system.

Starting with inner department branches, we designed and streamlined all department logos to have a same look and feel as well as all printed company collateral, including letterhead, business cards, envelopes, photography, etc.

For our field team members, we created an icon system to enhance communication while on the job site. Icons were placed on hard hat stickers, job site fencing, and high visibility workwear, allowing team members to easily communicate from a distance, increasing job site safety and efficiency processes.

SCALING THE BRAND

Teach and Train.

We educated, trained and rolled out collateral to our 14 national offices within 60 days with the goal of scaling the new branding footprint to all job sites within 16 months.