About Kamimoto Strings

Kamimoto String Instruments is a musical instrument shop in San Jose, CA that has been serving the local area since 1967. The offer violins, violas, cellos, and basses as well as other specialty stringed instruments. They also provide repair and maintenance services, and instrument rentals.

Class assignment

This logo design was completed as part of one of my graphic design classes at Santa Clara University. We were instructed to create a brand identity for a company, store, or other type of business. The branding identity needed to include a monogram logo, letterhead, a letter envelope, and business cards.

I was working as a sales assistant at Kamimoto String Instruments at the time, so with the permission of the business owners I developed the brand identity for my project with them in mind.

Keeping it recognizable

Their existing logo had been in use since the business was established, so it was well-recognized in the community. They used it on letterhead, receipts, rental contracts, and even the paper labels glued inside each instrument sold by the shop.

I wanted to maintain the recognition of their brand identity while giving it a bit more of a modern feel, so I chose to keep one of the two fonts from the original logo. After testing this font in uppercase and lowercase, I liked the look of it enough to use it across the whole branding kit.

Developing the monogram

I wanted something a bit more interesting, unique, and branded than just a simple “KSI” in the font I used. I combined the S of the initials of the business name with a violin; this proved to be a bit tricky since I wanted to keep a lot of the details to keep it true to the shape of the violin.

After some work on breaking it down into basic shapes, I was able to keep it readable as an S but also recognizable as a violin.

Business cards

Once I had the monogram designed, I adapted it to work for the business cards. I chose to fade it into the background similar to a watermark, to further emphasize the brand identity. The faded gray extends off the edges of the card for a full bleed border.

I chose to use a double-sided layout, keeping the design clean and spacious while still having all the important information present on the card. I also added a thin accent stripe in a medium-dark brown to the front side, bringing in the color of the string instruments the business sells.

Letterhead and envelope

The last component of this project was the letterhead template and the envelope. For both designs, I pulled the business name, monogram, and brown accent line from the business card design.

I also reused the faded gray watermark monogram. After printing a page with test swatches at varying percentages of gray on the office printer at Kamimoto Strings, I chose a gray that would be faintly visible without distracting from text printed on top of it. This would allow them to print their own letterhead sheets on-site as needed.

For the contact information at the bottom of the letterhead, I chose to use a standard sans-serif copy font so that it’s easier to read.

The envelope used the same design motifs as the letterhead template, with the monogram shifted to the right to interfere less with the recipient address.