Those who enjoy local wine and food may have noticed there is something strangely familiar about the society logo and the branding for this website.
When we (Shelley Trotter and I) established Mahurangi River Winery in 2008, our vision then was that the winery would form a great point of interest on a trail that would connect Snells Beach to Warkworth. One of the things we had not counted on in that whole process was the amount of time, effort and headspace that was needed to run a vineyard, winery and restaurant. If you want a 72 hour per day job then I can thoroughly recommend getting a boutique winery. But, I digress. We found that to make that business financially successful we would have to become people we did not want to be. In the end we had to exit. We ended up selling the land and plant assets and retained the wine stocks and business assets.
As part of establishing the winery we engaged a local designer, Gabrielle Schollum of Pinpoint Design, to work with us to develop the winery brand. Shelley, being a long time local, identifies that Tamahunga is her mountain and the Mahurangi is her river. The same held true for the winery. Those elements were incorporated into the logo and, as we say, the rest is history.
After finishing up with the winery we both had a lot more time to get involved in our real passion of establishing the walking and cycling trails in our area. As it became obvious that we would need to formalise a group to co-ordinate things we started thinking about all those other things like brand and image.
We suggested that the new society could possibly make some use of our old winery brand. The majority of the members thought this was an idea that had merit so we re-engaged Gabrielle to see what she could do to make us a trail group logo. I think she has done an amazing job and was ably assisted by the commentary and insight from our members. We now have a brand and style guide. You can download a copy here.
