City of Hopewell, VA

PERFORMANCE SPECIFICATION:

As the agency of record, engaged to lead a full rebranding initiative for the City of Hopewell to revitalize the city’s public-facing image and create unified design standards to strengthen messaging and communication across departments and platforms. Our work included redesigning the city logo, formalizing official color palettes and typography, and delivering a comprehensive brand guideline to ensure consistency across print, web, signage, and digital marketing.

THE SUMMARY:

Every city has a story, but not every city has the tools to tell it well. For the City of Hopewell, Originator Agency was brought in to close that gap. What began as a conversation about logos quickly grew into a comprehensive engagement to build a visual framework that matched the city’s values, modernized its presentation, and empowered its staff.

Our team started by digitizing and redrawing the existing city logo, ensuring it maintained its historical integrity while becoming adaptable for modern usage. We then developed a full brand identity suite—one that included refined color palettes, legible typography, and clear logo variations for both internal departments and public-facing materials.

More than design, this was a strategy in visual storytelling: an opportunity to help the City of Hopewell present itself with consistency, clarity, and confidence. From signage to social media, every asset was built to scale with the city’s goals, reflect its unique character, and work across platforms.

As part of our deliverables, Originator Agency developed a comprehensive Brand Guidelines Book that outlined:

• Logo usage rules (spacing, formats, do/don’t examples)
• Typography standards for headers, body text, and captions
• Approved color palettes with CMYK, RGB, HEX, and Pantone values
• Departmental sub-brand templates
• City signage mockups and print collateral samples

To support everyday communications, we designed a ready-to-use Social Media Toolkit for Hopewell’s staff, including editable templates for announcements, events, alerts, and milestones. These tools allowed the city to confidently deliver polished communications across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, and newsletters.

By focusing on flexibility and clarity, we ensured the rebrand would serve multiple departments, from parks and recreation to public works and city administration.

Originator Agency delivered a full Social Media Toolkit, empowering city staff with branded templates for announcements, event flyers, public notices, and emergency alerts. The kit included pre-sized graphics for Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter/X, along with best practices for text hierarchy and image placement to maintain visual consistency across platforms.

While the project did not include a new city website, we optimized the branding package for digital use. All assets were delivered in web-ready formats and included sample mockups of how the new brand would appear on digital signage, city presentations, mobile posts, and e-newsletter headers.

The project was executed with direct collaboration from the City of Hopewell’s Communications and Administrative teams. Regular feedback sessions ensured the brand reflected both the spirit of the city and staff’s operational needs. Our brand system was designed to grow with the city as it prepares for future development, economic revitalization, and tourism attraction.

Hopewell now has more than a new logo—they have a design system and visual language that is flexible, future-ready, and deeply rooted in community representation. From legacy preservation to modern utility, MediumFour’s rebranding of the City of Hopewell offers a strategic foundation for everything that comes next—whether it’s economic development, tourism visibility, or simply helping a resident feel proud of their city.

We didn’t just design assets—we delivered a civic identity platform with the tools, confidence, and clarity to help Hopewell communicate its future.