Meet Bill Gardner, Wichita’s ‘wizard’ of logos and branding

This post originally appeared on KMUW.

Long before Bill Gardner and Gardner Design helped create logos for Fortune 500 companies, his family was already well-versed in branding.

At the family ranch in Liberal, Gardner’s grandpa would use a literal brand to mark the cattle.

“It’s a diamond shape with a bar on the bottom of it. And that was the shape that they would brand in the cattle,” he said.

And as the family business changed from the range to real estate, the branding remained. His father placed metal diamond placards on the homes he sold, and his grandpa even proudly displayed one on each Cadillac he drove.

Gardner keeps a copy of the brand in his office to this day. As he holds it, he reflects on its role in where he is now.

“I can recall pulling out colored pencils as a child and kind of redrawing the diamond bar and kind of going, I think I’d make it squatter, or I’d make it wider, or this a little bit fatter,” he said. “So I was fascinated with brands from a really early stage.”

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