Veterans of military service possess many key education, experience and personality traits targeted by employers to build their companies through the growth of their largest investment – their employees. Gates Corporation’s HR Department committed to a new internal veterans initiative with specific educational and enrichment trainings focused toward their military veteran employees. To effectively promote their new internal initiative, we created a new program logo design, Enlist Opportunity, to engage and attract Gates’ veteran employees.

Military service is a private experience and generally not known to employers – applicants and employees are not required to disclose military service history. However, Gates had developed specific training programs to build their company through continued development specific to military service veterans. With this in mind, Gates required both new applicants and current employees to ‘self identify’ for participation with their new internal development program. Our new program logo design required a presentation to instantly speak to veterans from each military service branch – while avoiding any priority ranking – while also encouraging veterans to self-identify for enrollment. We focused upon a simple message of “Enlist Opportunity” for our initiative logo design:

Enlist: to enroll, to volunteer, to engage
Opportunity: a good position, chance, or prospect – as for advancement or success

However, the most difficult task within our new veterans logo design was to create a military service impression WITHOUT creating a priority for any specific service branch. Colors, Symbols, Slogans, Uniforms – all created detriments to a universal military presentation with creating any service branch heirarchy.

PROGRAM BRANDING BREAKTHROUGH

While seeking a workable military logo design for the internal program branding, we came across the many varied color representations of military service ribbons and honor medal ribbons. Playing with layout as a review of negative space, we discovered a 5-pointed star created from a circular arrangement of five honor medal ribbons. Five is significant in our focus toward the five service branches of the United States Armed Services: Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard.

Creating a central impression of the white negative space star from the five service branches, we were now freed to incorporate specific colorations to each service branch within our iniative logo design. Each of the five military robbons identifies a color pattern from the specific brand colors of the United States military service branches. Each brand is represented equally in creating the central focus of the white star.

The tagline “A Tactical Path to Veteran Success” solidifies an impression of military training and experience as a substantial foundation toward a successful civilian career through continued career development within Gates Corporation.

Additional creative projects for the new Gates Veterans Initiative include a branded Challenge Coin, promotional flyers, and a branded hat for enrolled personnel for registration and attendance to the new internal training events.

See the influence of each military service branch within the 5 ribbons of our new program logo design from the history of the United States Armed Forces.

Review additional Logo Design projects within our Strange Bird Designs portfolio.