Adams Design

We make you look twice.
And then we make sure you don't forget it.

At Adams Design, the brands we build aren't the loudest in the room. They're the ones with the clearest story. That story starts with strategy, not a moodboard. Once the idea is clear, everything we create has a purpose.

Most stone fabricators show you the slab. We built a fairytale around it.

Using the CUMAR Marble and Granite children as models, each slab became a stage, each image a different story. It won awards. It drove new business. And it gave an eighth-generation company a brand worthy of the next eight.

Most real estate agents look like every other real estate agent. Emma Guardia doesn't.

We built her brand around a single bold idea: the letter E, architectural, reductive, designed for street scale. Then we created fashion editorial portraits that were conceptual, fun, and completely unexpected for a real estate agent.

For The Bristol Wellesley, the story was simple: life gets better when it gets easier.

A beautiful home in the town they loved, without the weight of a large property. We built the brand around that feeling. Life Made Easy. The imagery, photographed with a fashion editorial feel, made ease look like the most elegant choice you could make.

Battery Wharf Residences was sitting on one of Boston's most extraordinary addresses and nobody knew it. It didn't need more amenities. It needed a story. We gave it one: Wonderfully European, comparing the site to world renowned resort cities. The campaign didn't sell condos, It sold the feeling of living somewhere that felt nothing like Boston.

Great visual storytelling isn't made. It's built. From the inside out.

Learn more about our brand identity and branding at www.adamsdesignboston.com

Cumar, Emma and Battery Wharf photographed by Stephen Sherman Photography Boston
The Bristol photographed by Bob Packert - Visual Artist

Safe branding is expensive. Stay within the category. Don’t push too far.

But what you gain in comfort, you lose in distinction.

When everyone is using the same symbols, the same colors, the same language, you don’t look established. You look interchangeable.

And interchangeable brands don’t get chosen. They get compared.

That’s the cost of playing it safe.

The real risk isn’t standing out.
It’s disappearing into a sea of sameness.

The work only works when it takes a position.

Work shown: Echelon Seaport (Cottonwood Group, The Collaborative Companies), Belclare Wellesley (The Noannet Group, The Collaborative Companies), Penmark (RF Walsh, Otis & Ahearn), Sensing Restaurant (Fairmont Hotels & Resorts, Kortenhaus Communications, Otis & Ahearn)

Learn more about these projects and others at www.adamsdesignboston.com

There’s no building yet.
No finished spaces. No lived experience to point to.

Just a site, a plan, and a decision someone has to make.

That’s when the brand matters most.

Because you’re not marketing what is.
You’re shaping what people believe it will be.

At Adams Design, we start with positioning.

What does this address mean?
Who is it for, and
what does it say about them?

Before any visuals, the idea has to be clear.

Then we build a visual language that carries across every touchpoint.
Identity, campaigns, brochures, digital, signage.

Each piece reinforcing the same idea, in different ways.

From Echelon Seaport, developed by Cottonwood Group in partnership with The Collaborative Companies to The Bristol Wellesley with The Collaborative Companies, Belclare Wellesley with The Noannet Group and The Collaborative Companies, One Harbor Shore with The Fallon Company and The Collaborative Companies, Stratus Residences with JD Advisors Inc and Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, The Sudbury Residences with The HYM Investment Group, LLC and The Collaborative Companies, One Canal Apartments with Trinity Financial, Inc., the goal is the same.

To create a brand that feels fully formed before the building ever is.

So when someone encounters the project, they don’t question it.
They understand it.

And more importantly, they see themselves in it.

That’s how momentum begins long before construction is complete.
And why the right brand can shape the success of a development before it’s even built.

To learn more about these and other similar projects, please visit our website: adamsdesignboston.com

One of the things I’ve always loved most about branding is the challenge of designing the logo.

Early in the planning of The Cape Club, a mixed-use residential and golf community on Cape Cod, Brenda Adams and the team at Adams Design developed an identity concept for the project as it was first being introduced.

The logo became the starting point for the brand thinking.

Inspired by the sculpted forms found throughout the course, the mark abstracts the shape of a golf bunker into a simple geometric figure. Within that form, the negative space resolves into a subtle “C,” referencing both the club’s name and the experience of the course itself.

Rather than relying on traditional country-club symbols, the concept drew directly from the physical landscape of the game.

From that mark, a broader visual language emerged. A palette drawn from sand, fairway greens, and the vivid orange of the course flag introduced warmth and contrast, while restrained typography and minimal layouts kept the identity calm, contemporary, and adaptable across residential, golf, and hospitality applications.

Even after many years in this field, designing logos like this remains one of my favorite parts of building a brand. The challenge is always the same: expressing an entire idea in a single mark.

Learn more about this project adamsdesignboston.com