The Deutsch Langhaar is a versatile sporting dog breed. Similar to the German Longhair pointer, the Deutsche Langhaars possess a similar build, but adhere to stricter breeding standards.
FUEL was approached by the Deutsch Langhaar – Gruppe Nordamerika (DL-GNA) to develop an updated logo that would raise the prestige of the breed and help further the club’s mission.
The client team provided competitive logos for inspiration to help drive direction along with some key requests:
FUEL designers brought it home.
“Developing a logo for a dog organization was a hands-on experience,” said FUEL Creative Director Bill Bollman. “We had the opportunity to spend time with Gage, a Deutsch Langhaar, to better understand the breed’s inherent characteristics and profile.”
Since the breed has many different colorings, how did the team settle on just one?
“While you can find Deutsch-Langhaars in a variety of colors (brown, various schimmels, brown and white), all dogs contain brown, so we chose that to best represent the breed,” said FUEL Design Director Pat Prior.
As for typography, there was a desire to give a nod to the heritage of the breed, but the team realized there were some limitations.
“With a longer name for the organization,” said Prior, “we chose a condensed typeface to make sure we could use the full group name and keep it legible at all sizes. The font is not an ornate Gothic/Old Style font, but does have nods to cleaner sans serif German fonts as a tie to the heritage of the breed. And the type color was an element they wanted to carry over from the original mark.”
With a new logo in hand, DL-GNA member Paul Buenzow has it locked and loaded on the club’s site, as well as on print insertions for the year. As for the design process and working with the team at FUEL, “it seemed the entire company was committed to helping us be successful,” he said.
Learn more about the organization at dl-gna.org.
Bill Bollman is FUEL’s Creative Director. Before co-founding FUEL in 2001, he worked for Horizon Communications, JW Morton and Basler Design Group. Bill studied Illustration at Hawkeye Tech in Waterloo, Iowa. An expert in the “old ways” of hands-on print production, these skills influence his work in the digital world to this day. His work throughout his career has been featured in international publications including Graphis, How International Design, Communication Arts, and The One Book as well as numerous design annuals and reference books.
