Case studies — Hardy Plumbing

Keep the monogram. Lose the clutter.

Hardy Plumbing already had the beginnings of a distinctive idea. The problem was that there were too many ideas competing for attention.

Business: Plumbing and heating
Focus: Logo rebuild and identity

Before

After

The original mark and the rebuild, shown at the same size

The problem

The original logo combined an HP monogram, pipework, a tap, a water drop and a circular device.

Individually, several of those elements made sense. Together, they made the logo unnecessarily complicated.

At small sizes the detail became harder to read, and on a van or work shirt there wasn’t one strong element for the eye to remember.

What we kept

The HP monogram was the strongest part of the original identity, so that became the starting point.

The plumbing connection also needed to remain obvious.

The aim wasn’t to disguise what Hardy does. It was to communicate it more simply.

What we changed

Instead of adding plumbing symbols around the initials, we made the water drop part of the monogram itself.

That allowed us to remove the extra tap, pipework and surrounding elements.

We strengthened the typography, improved the proportions and created a much cleaner overall shape.

More than a tidier logo.

The rebuilt mark sets a repeatable visual language: two defined blues, a confident wordmark and a monogram that can stand on its own wherever the full logo will not fit.

Deep navy

Water blue

HARDYOne idea · two colours · reproduces at any size

Out on the road.

The test of a trade logo is not the screen it was drawn on. These are the two places it does most of its work — handed across a doorstep, and parked outside a job for a day.

Hardy Plumbing business cards: white front with the HP monogram and full lockup, navy reverse carrying phone number, service list, area covered and email — Business cards

The mark carries the front on its own, with no contact detail competing for attention. Everything a customer needs to actually ring up goes on the navy reverse, in reading order: name, number, area, services, email.

Vehicle livery

Signwriting is where the rebuild pays off: two flat colours cut cleanly as vinyl, and the horizontal lockup fills the panel without the drop or the letters closing up. The number stays the biggest thing after the name, because that is what people read from behind.