Spring Mountain Day Camp
Role
Lead Designer
Lead Designer
Scope
Brand Strategy • Art Direction • Visual Identity • Campaign • Print • Out-of-home • Apparel
Brand Strategy • Art Direction • Visual Identity • Campaign • Print • Out-of-home • Apparel
Project type
Client work
Client work
• • • • • •
Spring Mountain Day Camp already had the most important part figured out: summer.
The challenge was everything around it. The existing materials felt disconnected and dated, making it harder for the brand to reflect the energy of the actual camp experience.
I wanted the refresh to feel familiar in the way summer camp should—bright, a little nostalgic and definitely not too polished—while giving the team a much more consistent system for recruitment, apparel, signage and everything else that comes with a new season.
Summer should look like summer
There was no reason to make this one complicated.
Camp is loud, colorful, imperfect and full of the kind of things that probably end up coming home covered in grass stains. I wanted the identity to capture some of that without turning it into a cartoon.
The hand-drawn lettering became the center of the system. It feels loose enough to have personality, but still strong enough to hold up on a billboard, a shirt or a sign across camp.
Nostalgia, without getting stuck in the past.
A lot of the visual direction came from the things people already associate with camp: hand-painted signs, sun-faded shirts, bright equipment, old postcards and the slightly mismatched colors that seem to belong together because summer says they do.
The palette leans into that feeling with warm oranges, yellows and softer supporting colors, while the typography keeps everything practical enough for schedules, recruitment messages and information parents actually need to read.
I wasn’t trying to make Spring Mountain feel retro.
I wanted it to feel familiar.
Kids notice the fun.
Spring Mountain has to speak to two very different people at the same time.
Kids need to see something that feels exciting. Parents need dates, enrollment information, hiring details and enough structure to know someone has this whole thing under control.
The identity was built to handle both. The expressive pieces get to be colorful and loose while the supporting typography creates a clear hierarchy for the practical stuff.
That balance became especially important once the system moved into advertising.
PREFERABLY ON A T-SHIRT SOMEONE ACTUALLY WANTS TO KEEP.
Some brands mostly live in ads and websites. Camp brands end up everywhere.
Shirts become uniforms, souvenirs and eventually something at the bottom of a drawer ten years later that somehow still means something. Banners need to work from across a parking lot. Flags need to feel just as much a part of camp as the place itself.
That meant the identity had to stay recognizable even when the application got simple.
Made for the next summer, too.
The goal was never to make Spring Mountain look completely different every year.
It was to give the camp enough of a visual foundation that each new season could feel fresh without starting over.
The logo can shift. Colors can move around. Campaign messages will change. But the personality underneath it all stays recognizable.
Which feels right for summer camp.
The details change every year. The feeling is supposed to come back.
