In 2023 I was asked to undertake a renaming and rebranding project for my employer, LR Pardo & Associates, which is a geotechnical engineering consultancy based in Melbourne, Australia.

The name "Pardo Engineering" was already in our back pocket, since that was our website/email domain, and we were reluctant to abandon fifteen years of name recognition that had been built up.

I'm indebted to Greg Leppert and his fantastic list of resources at guide.onym.co. From there, I found the Zinzin naming guide, which introduced me to concepts like the Competitive Namescape and brand name types.

I did some renaming work using the Zinzin framework, with the aim to land on an evocative name. In the end though, we fell back on our safe choice of "Pardo Engineering."

Once the name had been decided on, I got to work on the branding and generated several different concepts:

The third concept (above) was inspired by some ideas I found in the Logo Modernism book by Muller and Remington. The company founder wanted to connect the new logo with the old, and so I carried over the colours from the previous branding into the drill auger beneath the 'P'.

We wanted a logo that could work on its own but that had a more full or complete version that communicated the full company name. I then set out to draw a logotype that fit with the initial 'P' logo, going through several iterations:

The 'A' was particularly tricky to design in relationship to the other letterforms.

Once the artwork was approved, it was on to implementation. Vehicle decals, business cards, key chains, ball caps, and beer stubbies were up first, as well as all of the documents in our system.

From start to finish, I enjoyed working with my engineering colleagues to produce branding that both fit the company culture and positioned us strategically in the civil engineering landscape of Australia.