Girls Garage
Fearless Brand Design
Once upon a time, the masterminds behind Project H Design had a radical idea: a building camp for girls—a place where badasses-in-training could learn to fuse metal, swing hammers, screen print and skateboard while doing good deeds for their community and learning to harness their innate, incalculable strength.
After a few wildly successful years, the program took on a life—and a name—of its own: Girls Garage. With the name and community already in place, the organization approached Firebelly to build out the identity, create a new website and help brand their dedicated new space in West Berkeley, California.
BRAND & IDENTITY SYSTEM
As a new organization, Girls Garage gave us the opportunity to develop an entire system from scratch. We wanted to push beyond obvious STEM-centric and outdated heteronormative aesthetics to capture a deeper narrative — one of continuous growth, confidence and audacious curiosity. The resulting system is irreverent and meticulous, anchored in sound geometry, heroic portraiture and bold colors, embellished throughout with playfully textured accents.
BRAND ELEMENTS
The custom stenciled display font invokes industrial letterforms, but with both rounded and chiseled corners suggest ongoing evolution. Finally, hand-drawn, architectural illustrations bring a distinctly human touch and, appearing again and again throughout the system, become more meaningful as girls encounter them over the course of their education. We also designed a series of custom skill badges that work in concert with a branded tote bag, creating a collection of totems signifying ownership and hard-earned accomplishment.
At its foundation, portraits of Fearless Builder Girls radiate unapologetic pride.
SIGNAGE
The signage in and outside of the building help make the space feel like a real destination.
WEB DESIGN & DEVELOPMENT
The website, like our young heroines featured throughout, is small yet mighty. Built with parents’ and supporters’ needs in mind, it provides a seamless, interactive and informative experience.
Complementing focused page content are dynamic stories — short, loving anecdotes that celebrate the girls who make the organization what it is and clarify for new families what their daughters are in for. We designed and built flexible page templates, making it simple to update class schedules and descriptions each term, keeping the site fresh and functional.
While purely easter eggs, the draggable register marks on the x and y axes and animated toggling on small-screen navigation still make us giddy. All told, it was one of our favorite projects and we couldn’t be prouder to be counted among the fearless, fabulous Girls Garage family.