Santiam Heating & Sheet Metal has been heating, cooling, and fabricating in Oregon's mid-Willamette Valley since 1994. Looking ahead to their next thirty years, they asked us for a brand the crew would be proud to wear on a hat. Their own words gave us our starting point: make it right. We built the brand, voice, and website around that idea, keeping what the Valley already trusted and giving it a look as solid as the work.
Every project starts the same way: we put on our anthropologist hats and listen. We ran seven interviews, from a lead tech twenty-nine years in to a member of the founding family who's still on the crew. That phrase, make it right, kept coming up without us asking for it. We didn't need to invent a core value. We just wrote it down.
Those interviews shaped everything that followed, from the brand voice and website copy to the identity itself. The voice came straight from how the crew talks: plain, direct, and proud of the work. We organized it into three pillars (Straightforward, Hardworking, Rooted) and gave every line on the site one test. Would the crew say it out loud?
Say "Santiam" in Stayton and people think of the river, the high school, or this company. The old logo already knew that. It was a river winding through a red square to make an S, and people recognized it. So we kept the idea and redrew it. The new S is two halves that meet in the middle, each one leaning on the other. Heating and cooling. Commercial and residential. Thirty years behind them and the next thirty ahead. The sharp diagonal comes from the precision of the fab shop, and the rounded corners come from the people who show up at your door.
We kept Santiam red and surrounded it with colors from right here: fir green, river blue, and warm cream. We also drew a steelhead and an elk, because anyone who's spent time in the Valley knows both. New Order handles the logo and headlines, and New Hero handles everything else.
Schools, public buildings, and water plants are a big part of what Santiam does. The old site barely mentioned them and talked almost entirely to homeowners. Those are very different people. A contractor speccing a school retrofit wants to see finished projects and know you'll show up on schedule. A homeowner whose furnace quit at 6 a.m. wants someone to pick up the phone.
So the site has two front doors from the first click. The commercial side is direct and lets the project portfolio do the talking. The residential side is warm and patient. Both sides share the same red, the same S, and the same line under all of it: Built to Last.
Whoever lands on the site, the next step is clear. A homeowner with no heat can call or book a visit from the first screen. A contractor can go straight to finished projects and start a conversation. Someone looking for a career in the trades can meet the actual crew, photographed at the shop and on job sites around the Valley, and apply. Behind the scenes, every form goes to the right person, so no one's request sits in a general inbox.
Project Details
- Santiam Heating & Sheet Metal
