Work/SuncastCase study · 2025–present

Taking a legacy outdoor‑storage brand upmarket

A full rebrand and premiumization of Suncast: positioning, identity, packaging, the new website and the company’s first direct‑to‑consumer launch, led from inside the company with a design team I built and trained.

Client
Suncast, through ViperTec
Role
Creative Director, Brand & UX
Dates
March 2025 – present
Team
In‑house design team, hired and trained in 2025
Scope
Brand strategy, identity, packaging, e‑commerce, website, DTC launch
01The problem

Suncast makes sheds, deck boxes, hose reels and storage cabinets that people buy for function and on price. The brand looked like what it was: a dependable manufacturer, not a name worth paying more for.

Leadership wanted to move the whole range upmarket and sell direct to consumers for the first time, without losing the retail buyers who carry the business today.

  1. A large, long‑lived range. Every identity decision had to work on every SKU, carton and retailer listing, not just the launch pieces.
  2. No design team on day one. I hired and trained one while the rebrand was already under way.
  3. Retail partners set the rules. Amazon, Walmart, The Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wayfair each have their own image and packaging requirements.
  4. Every step needed executive approval, argued in terms of margin and risk.
02Three decisions
  1. 1

    Premium through meaning, not decoration.

    I built the identity on a single idea, sun‑cast light on everyday spaces, and anchored it in Cosmos Blue, a disciplined pairing of Scandia and DIN 2014, and one signature device: the pill, which carries the brand’s voice from a shipping carton to an Instagram story.

    Turned down: a cosmetic refresh of the logo and colors. It would have looked newer without giving anyone a reason to pay more.

  2. 2

    Build the team instead of renting one.

    I hired and trained an in‑house team that produces in Figma, Adobe and AI tools, and set up the AI‑assisted production workflows it runs on. The brand now has people who know it, inside the building, every day.

    Turned down: handing the rebrand to an agency. An agency delivers a launch; a team keeps the work on brand every month after it.

  3. 3

    Prove direct‑to‑consumer with one product.

    The first DTC product launches with its own positioning and launch creative before the range follows. One product lets us test price, message and channel with far less at stake.

    Turned down: taking the whole catalog direct at once, before we knew what the premium would bear.

03The work
Organize, Protect, Perform set in outline pills over a garage of Suncast cabinets
The brand idea in one frame. The pill is the signature device: the voice set in type, on photography that stays calm.
suncast.com · home
The new home page: one property, five products. A scroll‑driven tour for suncast.com. The camera leaves the aerial and settles on each product in its place, the shed, the deck box, the hose cart, the garage cabinets and the trash stow‑away, with the specs beside it. Built in HTML, CSS and JavaScript on a generated frame sequence; the products are the real SKUs.
One idea, few parts. The wordmark and the “S”, Cosmos Blue with a cream‑and‑dove neutral set and a handful of accents, Scandia for the voice and DIN 2014 for the detail.
Open deck box on a wood deck at sunset
Hose reel box beside a white brick wall
Trash hideaway beside an outdoor kitchen
Photography that gets out of the way. Bright, natural, uncluttered, with the product as the hero and room left for a headline.
From Chaos to Control posters in four approved color pairings
From chaos to control. One campaign line, four approved pairings, so the team can make a poster without asking.
Sports Locker shipping carton and pallet
Packaging. The same system on a shipping carton and a pallet wrap.
Deck box kraft carton dieline
Dielines, not mockups. Kraft cartons set with the litho rules so print never drifts.
Main listing image: closed storage unit on pure white
Alternate listing image: unit open on white
Detail image: lid latch close-up
Technical callout: lockable latch on a Cosmos field
The listing is the shelf. An eight‑image stack authored once at 2,200 px and mapped to Amazon, Walmart, The Home Depot, Lowe’s and Wayfair, so the box, the listing and the website tell one story.
Annotated litho panel for a storage shed
Litho guidelines. One margin formula (longest side ÷ 25), captions in Scandia, a dimension image on every panel and print LAB swatches.
Grid of nine Suncast Instagram posts
Instagram. Headline top left, a small “learn more”, the logo on the right edge. Before‑and‑after pairs: The Daily Mess, The Daily Win.
Six Suncast story frames
Stories. Conquer the chaos with the Sports Locker: the launch story for one product, before the range.
04Center of excellence

Part of the brief was making the new brand something the company could run and grow without me in every review.

So the system ships as a working site, not a PDF. Eleven chapters cover the logo, color, type, grid, iconography, photography and every application, and the live tools do the checking: a contrast table for every brand pairing, a logo‑size checker, a type setter that writes the CSS, a margin calculator for any format, eight e‑commerce image templates with each retailer’s rules, and a token export for code.

Suncast Brand Guidelines · v1.0 Explore the brand guidelines site 11 chapters, 6 live tools and the e‑commerce image system. Built in HTML, CSS and JavaScript so the team can use it, not just read it. Open the guidelines
05Where it stands
  • ShippedBrand Guidelines v1.0 as a live site, with tokens for code
  • ShippedPackaging and litho system across the range
  • ShippedE‑commerce image system for five retailers
  • ShippedCampaign, social and stationery systems
  • Rolling outThe new suncast.com and the first direct‑to‑consumer launch
  • In placeAn in‑house team that ships on‑brand work without a review for every asset
06My role

I set the brand strategy and creative direction, presented the work to the executive team and kept it intact through approval, personally led the website from strategy and information architecture through UX and visual design, and led marketing for the direct‑to‑consumer launch. The team I built produced the assets.