A civic identity Stowe Township can run itself
A new wordmark, logo, and plain-language brand system for Stowe Township, documented so a small staff can apply it consistently without a designer on call.
Stowe Township sits along the Ohio River in Allegheny County, next to McKees Rocks and our own front door. Like a lot of small municipalities, it had grown a visual identity by accident: a logo few people could find a clean copy of, notices and signage that never quite matched, and nothing written down to keep it consistent from one administration to the next.
The challenge
A township of a few thousand residents does not have a marketing department. It has a small staff doing many jobs at once. Any identity we delivered had to be something they could actually use day to day, on a council agenda, a Facebook post, a water notice, and a sign, without calling a designer every time.
Our approach
We started with the place. Stowe is a river town with a steel-era past, plain and hardworking, and the identity needed to read that way: confident and civic, never fussy. We designed a durable wordmark and a simple, reproducible logo that holds up at sign scale and at favicon scale, in one color on a black-and-white form as readily as in full color.
Around the mark we built a small, practical brand system: an accessible color palette and type scale verified against WCAG 2.2 AA contrast, clear usage rules, and ready-to-use templates for the documents the township actually produces. The guidelines are written in plain language, with examples of what to do rather than abstract theory.
What we delivered
- A primary logo and wordmark with clear-space and one-color variants
- An accessible color and typography system, contrast-checked for public use
- Plain-language brand guidelines a non-designer can follow
- Templates for letterhead, public notices, and social posts
The result is an identity the township owns and can maintain itself, and a foundation the new website was then built on.