Bluewater Sailing School · Branding · sample engagement
The burgee, grown up
Corporate charter inquiries +140% · 91% family re-enrollment held
The brief
Bluewater Sailing School has taught Lake Michigan for thirty years behind a clip-art burgee that now reads “kids’ summer camp” — just as it expands into corporate team-building charters.
The brief: modernize the mark without losing the burgee silhouette families recognize, and make it work at a 20mm polo crest and as a one-color flag.
Success meant corporate charter inquiries, a passed embroidery-legibility test, and family re-enrollment that did not drop.
Constraints: Keep the burgee silhouette recognizable · embroider legibly at 20mm · one-color flag application · don’t alienate 30 years of families.
How it was made
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Discovery
The 1994 burgee is clip-art, and corporate charter buyers don’t take it seriously. But families have loved the school for thirty years, and the burgee shape itself carries that equity. The silhouette stays; the cartoon rendering goes.
Mark audit + interview findings. -
Strategy
Position: “Serious water. Welcoming crew.” One mark has to satisfy a corporate event planner and a returning family at once. Learn-to-sail and corporate charters fly under a single burgee. Gate ① signed before any drawing began.
Two-audience map + architecture. -
Concept
Three directions. A compass rose abandoned thirty years of recognition; a wave monogram dropped the flag entirely and blurred at embroidery size. The modern burgee kept the silhouette, survived one color, and held at 20mm — it won.
Three directions — rejected branches preserved. -
Design
The burgee rebuilt on a construction grid: a swallowtail pennant, one knockout wave, a regatta-red masthead dot. Lake navy, sail white, a credible serif. One silhouette runs from a polo crest to a full mainsail decal.
Identity system sheet. -
Production
An actual-size 20mm crest test proved the notch and wave hold when stitched; the wave simplifies to a single stroke below 25mm. A three-thread spec, a one-color flag dieline, and stitch files let the school reorder without a designer.
Embroidery spec + flag dieline. -
Results — how we measured
Corporate charter inquiries rose 140% the season after launch, the 20mm embroidery legibility test passed, and family re-enrollment held at 91% — the guardrail that proved the refresh kept the base. Demonstrative; cards below.
Inquiries instrument (demonstrative).
The deliverable, live
This is the working deliverable itself — not a mockup of it.
Open full screen ↗Results demonstrative data
- +140%corporate charter inquiries
- 20mmembroidery legibility — passed
- 91%family re-enrollment (held)
- 1-colorflag application — proven
“They kept the flag my kids grew up with and somehow made it look like a yacht club. Our first corporate group booked straight off the new brochure.”
Director persona, Bluewater Sailing School — demonstration quote
In the world
Where the system lives once it ships — shelf, hands, and street. photography in production
