We just launched a rebrand and website for a small engine shop (lawn mowers and snow blowers) in Granite City, IL whose owner may or may not be related to a certain Gorilla team member. These guys, Franko Small Engines, sell heavy duty lawn care equipment, both to Average Joe as well as landscapers and lawn care service providers. Our job was represent the brand they’ve built since 1959 with a logo, tagline and small website, focused on helping them get more people through the doors.
We started the job by heading over to the shop, exploring, talking extensively with the owner, Kevin, about the company’s history, customer base, challenges as a business owner and goals. Visual inspiration for the design came not only from all the shiny new mowers, but from peg boards on the walls, old school paper tags marking items for sale, uniforms, old signage, family photos and a finger on Kevin’s right hand that that seemed fitting for a guy who’s been repairing lawn mowers his whole life.
After the visit, we had a pretty solid idea for where we wanted to take the brand. It was about tradition and the local customer base that he and his family have built over the years on great service and relationships.
We explored several clean, retro-feeling typestyles and graphic ideas for the logo before finally landing on the colored one represented below.
The gear container for the type was meant to hint at the mechanics of what they do and the typeface was intended to bring out the classic, down-to-earth characteristics that really define their business. The final tagline: Family owned. Lawn trusted. Since 1959. hammered that tradition home as well.
Jumping into the website, we made use of the visual assets we collected at our visit to the shop for textures, background images, etc. We had access to Toro’s dealer library of images as well, which we made use of to represent some of their products. The copy was intended to be informative, but with some personality. We represented the types of products they sell, the maintenance services offered and the history of their shop. The primary calls to action hang down the right side of the layout regardless of the page you’re viewing.
It was a small project, but a lot of fun, and one that we’re proud to put our names on. Now we need some retro t-shirts with that logo on it.