LOGO DESIGN CASE STUDY
Stripe Master
An evolution of an existing brand that became a revolution.
The History
Stripe Master was born in Australia as a small family business before transferring to the UK. It started life mainly applying graphics to private vehicles, including "go faster stripes" as echoed in the name. The original business was later split into two sister companies: Stripe Master and Tint Master. Initially, as the names suggest, Stripe Master continued to focus on graphics applied to the body of private vehicles, while Tint Master focused on tinting windows.
However, with time, the focus of the companies began to change. Tint Master started to offer a full range of services for private vehicles, not just windows, while the company's key market became more commercial, supplying and fitting full colour vehicle wraps for vans, lorries and coaches, as well as offering signage and wall graphics.
Throughout this period, Stripe Master's logo had already been through a number of evolutions.
The Brief
The name had enough recognition in the industry that it was to be retained, but with new owners and a new direction for the business, it was important that the logo represented the company's new reality and not its past persona.
Tint Master had already been rebranded with a new logo, and an early concept was to bring Stripe Master's logo closer to its sister company so that they could sit comfortably alongside each other. However, it didn't seem to fit with the company's target market, and as the two continued to diverge into different markets, it was decided that it was no longer necessary to emphasise the direct connection.
The Logo Concept
The new owner already had some ideas about the direction they wanted to take. Most of the commercial vehicles they wrapped, regardless of the designs on the side and front, incorporated vehicle safety chevrons on the back to comply with 'Chapter 8' regulations (a set of regulations set by the UK Departments for Transport regarding the use of high-visibility markings on vehicles parked or operating on roads). They were also keen to use a more 'industrial' colour palette, yellow and black, that would speak more directly to their target market.
Working from those two anchors — chevrons and palette — I went through various experiments before arriving at the concept of the striped S mark. The mark is built from an uppercase S, split by a diagonal yellow stripe centred on the S's middle stroke. The ends of the black segments are cut cleanly along a diagonal so they line up with each other.
The concept came together quite early, but the final shape was locked in only after careful font selection to ensure a clear relationship between the mark and the logotype.
Typography
Rather than risk the near-match that happens when a mark and a logotype share a letter but don't quite agree, I chose the typeface first. The wordmark itself is a heavy, industrial sans serif with some manual adjustment to certain letter-shapes. The M was adjusted to have sloping sides rather than a square box shape, and the S became the geometry on which the mark was built — so the two would match precisely rather than just resemble each other.
Intentional spacing between the mark and the logotype, along with precise sizing and kerning of the lettering, created a balanced composition — bold enough to work at a distance on the side of a lorry, controlled enough to stay legible on a business card.
Variations
The logo would need to work across everything from business cards to signage, and across a variety of background colours, so it was important to build in the flexibility to do that while keeping it clear and consistent.
I developed a primary horizontal layout — mark and logotype side by side, divided by a line — for use wherever space allowed, alongside a more compact vertical layout for tighter spaces, with the mark alone reserved for situations too small for either, like a social media profile picture.
Each of those needed to hold up across the brand's colour range too, so I built out a full set of colourways — on yellow, on black, on white, plus single-colour black and white versions — so the logo would stay legible and consistent wherever it landed.
Brand Identity
My brief was primarily the logo, but what I delivered went further — a foundational identity complete enough to run a business on.
I built the colour system around Stripe Master Yellow, but with proportional limits: yellow should cover no more than around a third of any given piece, black kept to a supporting role, and white doing most of the remaining work.
That restraint was deliberate — a strong colour like this yellow loses its impact fast if it's overused, so the system needed rules that protected it. I also selected a small set of secondary colours specifically because they'd hold their own against the yellow without fighting it, allowing room to differentiate without ever losing the core identity.
Typefaces needed the same kind of restraint. Monsal Gothic Heavy became the heading and sub-heading face — chosen because it shares enough weight and character with Benton Sans Black to feel like part of the same family (it's actually where the M in the wordmark comes from), while being different enough that Benton Sans Black could stay exclusive to the logotype itself.
That separation matters: if the heading font and the logo font were the same, the logo would lose its distinctness on the page.
For body text, I chose Montserrat Light — a cleaner, lower-contrast face that reads well at length, with enough variation between characters to avoid dense text turning into a flat grey block.
Introductions use an italic cut of the same face, giving the hierarchy one more subtle level without introducing a third typeface.
Extending the logo's own logic rather than inventing new visual language, the logo came with its own working system attached — colour, type, shape — everything needed to apply it consistently from day one.
That system has since grown well beyond its original scope, but the foundation it grew from is the one laid out here, and it's satisfying to see it still holding together as one consistent identity: on the building signage, in website graphics, on the vehicles, the stationery, even the workwear.
In Their Own Words ...
Stripe Master Ltd is a growing vehicle wrapping and commercial graphics business. We wanted a strong, professional identity that would make us stand out, reflect the quality of our work and give customers confidence in the business.
The business did not have a properly developed brand identity. We needed more than just a basic logo—we wanted something professional and distinctive that could grow with the business and be used consistently across our vehicles, premises, workwear, website and marketing materials.
The final result was bold, professional and instantly recognisable. It suited the nature of our business and gave Stripe Master a strong identity that still works well around 7 years later.
The branding has helped us present ourselves as a professional and established company. It has given us a consistent look across everything we do and has become a key part of how customers recognise Stripe Master. It has also provided the foundation for our website, signage, vehicles, clothing and other marketing materials as the business has grown.
I would especially recommend Phil to small and growing businesses, established companies looking to refresh their identity, and anyone in a creative, commercial or service-based industry who wants a brand that reflects their business properly. He takes the time to understand the company, the market and the brief, and creates work that is both visually strong and practical to use.
Jake Walsh, Stripe master Ltd