It’s official! We are ecstatic to finally share our reinvented website and refreshed family of brands with our industry friends, family, Seattle community, loyal clients, and beyond. After over a year of dedicated work, we are thrilled to finally share this labor of love with you all. As DSquared’s Creative Director, I felt a profound responsibility and honor to guide our teams through this creative process alongside our incredible branding team, Epoch Design Co. Over the past year, there were times where we felt challenged, joyful, and everything in between. Together, we’ve achieved more than just designing new logos or a website; we’ve journeyed back through our history and beautifully intertwined our past with our present, all while continuing to look toward the future.
Rewind to 2023
I had the privilege to attend a talk where Brian Smith, the Founder of UGG, spoke about his book “The Birth of the Brand” and the rise of the UGG empire. In this session, he reminded me that a brand is not a logo, it’s how you make people feel. It’s the stories we tell and the experiences we create.
When we initially sat down and started the brand refresh process in 2023, I was so focused on the look. Which colors would look best? What should the logo look like? How would people perceive different aspects of this or that design? After attending the panel by Brian Smith, I quickly realized that we were doing so much more than just creating new visuals. We were dissecting what it really means to be a top catering and hospitality company in the greater Seattle market. We were reviewing the ways we show up for our team members, our clients, our guests, and our community as a whole. We were tapping back into our roots to remind our teams, and ourselves where we came from: a click burner in the basement of my parents house, heating up pasta water for a 20 person party. Good tunes blaring in the background and loving intention going into every piece. While our equipment, team, and setting have changed, one thing hasn't; our commitment to excellent food and unreasonable hospitality. Oh, and we still cook to great music too!
Once I recognized that it was our story and our people who were meant to shine through this brand refresh, the path became clearer, more meaningful, and transformative.
Fresh Visual Identities, Same Values
With that being said, we’ve had an absolute blast with updating our visual and creative elements. As you explore our new website, you will see that we’ve had quite the revamp to our visual identities. We worked extensively with Massachusetts-based Epoch Design Co. and their Creative Directress, Ash Boucher, to dig deep and tap back into the true core of who we are. This allowed us to create visuals that authentically represented our entire team and our roots dating back to 1986. After all, throwbacks are in, right?
What we appreciate about Ash, and why we ultimately feel so confident about this refresh, is that she never told us who we are supposed to be just to fit an identity we thought people would like. Instead, she encouraged us to share our most authentic selves throughout this process, so that she could accurately translate who we are into the visual and creative output of this process. She asked the hard questions that turned into weeks of self-reflection, months of important conversations, and eventually over a year of self discovery.
This being my first large-scale project as Creative Director, across DSquared and all of our other brands, I felt the weight of this process deeply. While it was overwhelming at times, there is no greater joy than uniting every member of our team to create something that feels unique and special to us. I loved every minute of musing over the tiniest lines in our logos or deciding which colors truly represented our brands. Through this process, I’ve also been reminded of the story about our history, our brand, and our people. What I’ve come to realize is just how important it was for us to take the time to reflect on who we are as we move onto this next chapter. We know that we wouldn't be where we are without the past 30+ years of learning and growing. It's not possible to grow into our future without reflecting on and honoring our past.
We are so thankful that through this process with EDC, we have prioritized keeping our story, our people, and our values at the forefront of this refresh. Whether it be in the branding or new website, you will find that our overarching goal remains the same: serving up hospitality from the heart while gathering and nourishing our community.
Our New Online Look
Can we just take a moment to talk about our new website?! This feels like the cherry on top of our brand refresh, perfectly bringing everything together. Ash turned our vision into reality, seamlessly blending our refreshed identity and feel into this new website. We are so proud to present a user-friendly, interactive, fun, and visually pleasing website to our community. More than that, we are beyond excited to have an online presence that truly feels aligned with who we are and where we’re heading.
A Bright Future Ahead!
We’re happy to say that DSquared Hospitality has grown and evolved so much over the years. What started out as Tuxedos & Tennis Shoes, the brand you all know and love, has blossomed into a diverse array of brands. From corporate dining to new venues and cafes, we’ve greatly expanded both our services and the scope of our events. Despite this expansion, we’ve remained steadfast in our commitment to our three core philosophies: Teamwork, Guest First Service, and Culinary Brilliance. So, whether it be the warm smile you receive when ordering food at Muse inside of Benaroya Hall or the memorable details we execute on a couple’s special day, our brand is always going to be more than the look of our logos or our website. Our brand is the memories we impart on the people we get to work alongside.
What we do best is take care of people, and we have an amazing time doing it. The DSquared family is so excited to continue to grow with you, Seattle. Cheers to the future!
Explore our new website at www.dsquaredcompany.com to learn more about our story, discover our refreshed family of brands, and more!
Photo Credits: Mandee Rae Photography
