Strategy

Category Recognition Without Cliché - Keep The Work Cues, Lose The Grime
Move: Use safety yellow, hazard patterns, sturdy industrial typography, and utility-inspired letterforms to signal serious work while deliberately avoiding dirt, distressing, and real-world worksite textures.

Unexpected Visual Collision - Combine The Familiar With The Foreign

Move: Pair familiar worksite cues with a visual language foreign to the category, creating surprise without sacrificing immediate recognition of real City work.

Draw from Swiss graphic design, the work of Paula Scher, and painted signage and environmental graphics found in industrial settings.

Use large type, dramatic scale shifts, typography and hazard-pattern rectangles arranged both horizontally and vertically, and heavily cropped words that move between communication and ornament. This unexpected collision kept Durham Works recognizable as work-focused content while making it immediately distinguishable in a crowded YouTube feed.

Durham-Recognizable Color - Replace Equipment Black With City Blue
Move: Keep safety yellow as the dominant worksite cue, but replace the category’s stereotypical black and occasional orange with the City’s official dark blue and white, plus lighter tints derived from the blue.

The safety yellow was not an exact match for the City’s official gold, but pairing it with City blue, blue tints, and white made the palette read as Durham.

Employee-Centered Identity - Build Around Who Makes Durham Work

Move: Center the identity on the employees, jobs, and departments featured in the series rather than making the host its permanent visual subject.

When the client questioned whether the host should anchor the logo, I argued that the employees and their work were the lasting brand promise. The client agreed. The host instead played the viewer’s role— curious, funny, new to the job, and learning by doing.

Human-Powered Rhythm - Make The Series Sound Like A Team At Work

Move: Select and customize a modular music kit built entirely from hand claps, finger snaps, boot stomps, and thigh slaps.

Rather than sounding like isolated hits, the layered percussion created a chorus-like effect that suggested a group of people generating the rhythm together with their hands and bodies. The all-human instrumentation made the identity feel physical, collective, and joyful.

I customized the kit for the title sequence, credits, transitions, section titles, and segments that needed extra momentum.

Streaming Series Polish - Design To The Standard Of A Top Streamer
Move: Develop the brand identity to an unusually high level of sophistication, precision, and polish— high enough for Durham Works to sit comfortably alongside programming on Netflix or HBO Max.