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Founded by artists, musicians, motorcyclists, and (of course) barbers, The Commonwealth Barber Shop is more than just a place to get a hot towel and a shave. A gruff but welcoming oasis of vintage cool situated in historic downtown Winchester, CWBS cultivated a space that spoke to the growing younger, alternative crowd in town without scaring off the older generation. From the get-go, the owners knew they wanted to create a diverse range of apparel and other merchandise to support their service based business. We designed a minimal visual identity that stands on its own without bogging down the unique merch designs.
↳ Logo
↳ Brand Identity
↳ Merchandise
↳ Illustrations
↳ Website
CWBS already had a logotype in progress when we were brought on board. While we wanted to keep the visual identity relatively minimal, the type treatment of the in-progress logo just didn’t stand out quite enough. We finalized it with updated type choices and refined kerning, switching out a simple sans for the dynamic, calligraphic sharpness of Manofa. The visual identity uses the same display font as the logotype and Source Code Pro for body copy. The three color palette—black, white, and a warm, vintage gold—was selected to allow for a wide range of colors to be used on the merch designs without detracting from the branding.
The goal for the merch line isn’t necessarily to directly advertise The Commonwealth, instead it helps cultivate an eclectic visual language around the barber shop. We’ve designed over 10+ pieces of merchandise for this small business, each one featuring different illustration and typography styles that all still feel like The Commonwealth Barber Shop. Design inspiration for the CWBS line is often pulled from vintage t-shirts and cheeky, enigmatic taglines. The team at CWBS always provides a few visual references, but mostly they just ask us to make something that will look right at home on someone who’s covered in tattoos or zooming by on an antique motorcycle.
Photos by Cory Hammons
We designed and developed a simple, custom three page website to serve as the shop’s online hub. The team wanted a unique site that required minimal updates on their end, so we designed three core pages and then linked out to their third party booking and merch store platforms. To strike a balance between minimal but not overly serious, we added a quick rough-edged looping scissor animation to the loading screen.
