Houston White
Brand Identity
Culture
Progress
Entrepreneur, designer, and community leader Houston White has built a community hub, retail space and growing apparel and accessories business over the past 13 years under the brand HWMR, or Houston White Men’s Room—his barbershop in North Minneapolis. Together, we solidified Houston White as a brand unto itself, with distinct product brands supporting it.
Entrepreneur, designer, and community leader Houston White has built a community hub, retail space and growing apparel and accessories business over the past 13 years under the brand HWMR, or Houston White Men’s Room—his barbershop in North Minneapolis. Together, we solidified Houston White as a brand unto itself, with distinct product brands supporting it.
Houston’s vibrant spirit and ambition to bring together people of all identities, races, cultures, backgrounds, and neighborhoods in pursuit of higher good illuminated for us a new pathway for his business and his brand.
We designed this Brand Book to evoke the intention, distinction, and spirit of the Houston White brand, telling the story of its cultural roots and evolution from community-building barbershop to conscious fashion design house.
We developed lookbooks for each product brand to showcase seasonal collections with stunning photography alongside the design details for each piece and notes on the cultural ideas that inspired them.
The master brand identity is born of one of the very first sketches Houston himself created to blend the H and W of his name. The crest is a mark Houston had incorporated into different collections, reflecting his sense of community as family and brand as a connecting force. We redesigned the crest to elevate the original symbols of Black excellence and add the tools that the Houston White brand uses to bring people, cultures and communities together.
The New Classic identity with its minimalist shield and timeless typeface takes cues from vintage formalwear, specifically Black Ivy League styles. The collections within this line offer new perspectives on traditional forms to make them more dapper and distinctive.
Viictory brings bolder hues and cultural textures to sportswear, incorporating the founder’s lucky number seven in roman numerals as part of the rightfully ambitious name. Houston White is a pioneer in bringing Black culture to golf and tennis with the intention of opening these sports to more players and communities of color.
The Fresh design nods to challenging the status quo and being true to who you are. The collections under this product brand offer leisure looks for feeling good and living big, dreaming hard and hustling harder.
Houston White exists to create strength through cultural collision, to demonstrate how our differences make us dope, to inspire an inclusive celebration of Black culture, and motivate us all to take action toward a more enlightened and equitable world.