StoneRidge Golf Club
Role: Senior Designer at Sussner
Logo Design
Brand Identity Design
Tournament Branding
Restaurant Branding
Location
Stillwater, MN
Quarry tough, not farm friendly.
The club was missing opportunities every day by sending the wrong message, and they where ready to change. There wasn't anything wrong with the barn or the illustration, but It said farm friendly when the golf course said something else entirely.
*Photo and video shot by Parka Studios.
So, we went digging.
The course was built on an old sand and rock quarry. Members already called it The Rock Pile. Once we found that, the direction was obvious. The story was always there. It just needed someone to dig it up.
Ace.
My boss and creative director at the time is an avid golfer. He had been waiting for a project like this for quite a long time. We spent late nights and long weekends burning through ideas. Each miss cleared the rubble. The tee-hammer came on the final day, the morning before the client presentation. I was sketching and two unrelated concepts collided. I got up from my desk, threw the sketch down, and said "this is it." We both nodded and presented it shortly after. Ace.
The Tee-Hammer
Their new mark simply combines a golf tee with a hammer. Rugged, direct, and masculine. It reflects the geology the course was built on and the kind of golf it demands. Approved with minimal revisions. That's usually the sign you got it right.
The barn took a back seat and became a sub-branded asset. We pulled in textures from the barn as well. It's not something we thought should get left behind, but it certainly wasn't the hero anymore.
Taking the bull by the horns
The Ridgatational is the club's signature annual member tournament, where the superintendent sets up the toughest possible conditions, and it needed its own mark.
What if the tee was hammered into a bull skull? I mean, there IS a barn on the property... right?
Quarry tough.
StoneRidge had a story worth telling. It just needed someone to stop leading with a barn and start leading with their history. The members already knew what this place was. Now the brand knows it too.
The local watering hole.
Danny's is the on-property restaurant where rounds end and stories get told. A rebrand that stops at the logo isn't a rebrand. Danny's needed an uplift to stay on brand as well.
My vision craved complexity. The client's leaned simple. So, we met in the middle.
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