A missive on the TVD Logo

A slight change of gears for today’s post as I shift from talking about social business to briefly talking about my new business: Tualatin Valley Distilling. I wanted to explain an important part of our company’s esthetic choice and its symbolism for us:

As you’ve likely noticed, our company logo is a design inspired by both Frank Lloyd Wright and Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both my business partner, Corey, and I have a predilection towards these architects/designers and their distinct panoply of work. We wanted to replicate the craftsman ethos within our design as a touchstone for our own company’s guiding principles. Also taking inspiration from Compass Box Whisky’s capability for what we call neo-vintage and classically timeless design, we gave that guidance to our brilliant designer, Gary Chelak, who came up with what you see today.

I say brilliant, because Gary incorporated a depth and breadth of thought into the design that reveals itself slowly and intentionally, in layers of complexity and simplicity balanced to what we consider the perfect effect.

On the surface, the logo is a stylized stained glass version of a stalk of barley in the craftsman genre. However, a deeper look shows additional elements nodding to even more significance.

The idea behind the specific elements from top to bottom show the beginnings of the process in which we use barley as the main ingredient of our flagship whiskey, with the color differentiations denoting the grain’s growth, malting, and drying/smoking process. Moving down, we see the two green-blue-ish diamonds signifying the stalk of the barley as well as the water (greener was our design choice over blue) and process used to brew the barley and release the sugars necessary for the next two diamonds to do their job: the yeast. This is the yellow diamonds of yeast which eat the sugars during the fermentation process and in turn produce the alcohol in the mash we then run through the distillation process to the final element of the design; the rosette as the final product.

The design was done with specific intent to use motion drawing the eye from top to bottom, adding color & shape as refinement, to produce the ultimate element at the end as the complete distilling process: A timeless story within a deceivingly simple company logo. We hope you like it even more, now that you know the thought process and story behind the design and some of the driving ideals of our company.