Solitude The Ranch At Breckenridge: Branding & Sales Materials

Aug 1

The Need

In August of 2022, one of the last available parcels of land in Breckenridge, Colorado was approved for redevelopment, it would be an extension of the aging Ranch At Breckenridge development and needed a fresh identity to take to the market. The vision was a rustic, and secluded series of homesites that preserved the wild nature of this special piece of property by limiting the building sites and keeping the beautiful wooded nature of the forest on this high ridge. Owners would be incredibly high-end, seeking a legacy property that leaned into the western way of life with sites ranging from 5 to 20 acres.

The Solution(s)

Brand System

The first need for this project was a new brand to bring to the market. It needed to balance two competing elements, a tie to the longstanding Ranch At Breckenridge development of which the project is an extension, and a fresh new look that communicated the luxurious yet rustic vision of the developer. The name Solitude had already been decided upon so I got to work creating one of my most western brand identities to date.

I really leaned into the “brand” look with this one, evoking a mark that one could envision being wrought out of iron, or hung over the gate at a ranch. I also knew I wanted to keep the letter forms of S, R, and B within the icon mark. So I affixed our S within a classic western diamond and created a unique ligature with the RB to keep the presence of the Ranch at Breckenridge brand embedded within the new identity directly. Proportions were weighted to help this identity scale from a hanging sign to a tiny branded mark on promotional collateral. For the rest of the system I grabbed the far out west Arpona typeface for a preliminary identity typeface, and created a subtle tri-color palette that evoked pine ranch fences rolling under the wide open Colorado sky.

View The Full Brand Package

Website

With the brand in hand it was time to create the main point of public interaction for the project, a website. Like many other projects I worked on with the Slifer Smith & Frampton new development division the easy choice for the project was a clean and simple Squarespace site with a suite of integrated programs that kept the project fully synced with company systems including integrations from our design program Marq, and CRM system kvCore. One interesting feature of note for the site was the application of an interactive sitemap that showed available properties and their location on the site. This proved a critical element as it allowed our sales team to really put each property’s best foot forward on individual site pages.

View The Website

Sales Materials

With the website approved and getting traction it was time to look at our in-person collateral. I designed a full suite of sales materials including banners, illustrative site maps, sales folders, branded letter head and more. All of it sought to balance the western edge of the brand with high-end, refined living. Imagery was largely natural and aspirational showcasing the very best of the Colorado high-life.

Homesite markers using the brand system.

Advertising

The last piece to bring the project to market was an advertising suite. These once again reflected the elevated brand and leveraged the limited rendering assets available as this was a homesite sales project. These ads ran in local and national publications as well as in a in-house managed digital campaign that generated qualified leads throughout the lifecycle of the project.

A print ad in our company publication The Portfolio.

A print ad for the front page spot in the Summit and Vail Dailies.

The Results

The timeframe from go to launch was inherently tight for this project. Final approvals came through in late June, and we knew we wanted to catch what we could of the summer selling season in Breckenridge. Our team was able to bring this new offering to market in August of 2022 giving the sales team key weeks to secure early contracts and build critical momentum. In the end this early action proved critical as we secured over $6 million in contracts before the road up to the property was even finished, and set Solitude up for a strong future as the sites became accessible.