Every person and company has a story to tell. We’re excited to share with you our unconventional story of how a Seattle remodeling company was born from a cosmopolitan modeling career and a deep-rooted love for the state of Washington.
Modeling and Remodeling
Two occupations you don’t often find on the same resume: fashion modeling and home construction. Yet, those are two you’ll see when you look at the resume of our founder, Jason Legat. In junior high he started working for a family friend, Rick Newell, who owned a general contracting business on Whidbey Island. It’s a place Jason, his family, and many of the staff in our office still frequent. After high school, Jason spent a few years traveling the world to model designer clothing including: Nike, DKNY and Pierre Cardin. His heart was always back in Washington and within an industry that provided a more tangible and permanent product. So eventually he moved back and the roles reversed—Jason began leading the business. He officially launched the company in 2002, and retired from modeling shortly after, but retained the history of his career within the name of the business: Model Remodel. It was a little known fact, until now!
The Story Behind the Design
A slowly growing company has a lot more opportunity for natural development of their brand identity than a quickly started enterprise. Our history and evolution is something we’re very proud of here at Model Remodel. Over the years, we’ve been able to take bits and pieces of our history along for the ride, including: our logo, the wooden background seen on our website and printouts, and much of the décor in our office. Salvaging doesn’t just apply to lumber or raw materials, we’ve found unique ways to use and reuse elements of our brand that have stories of their own.The first example of this is our logo.
The original logo was indicative of a cassette tape, and included a man plus a hammer.
As the company grew, it didn’t make sense to use a clipart man anymore. The man in our current logo is, in fact, Jason. Traced from an actually photo of him, and paired with a hammer icon, the new “man and hammer” emblem was born. Simple, but very much indicative of the company’s roots.
As the years past, it was decided that some quick editing would remove the glasses from his face (which you can see on the larger logo above) for the more modern and sleek logo we have today:
We also have a signature wood texture with a story of its own. The wood can be found as the background of our website and interspersed within our printed materials. It is the original wood from a barn that Jason and some of his original crew demoed on Whidbey Island in the Spring of 2004.
Our office is also home to some other hidden gems if you know where to look. It’s what makes our office and culture unique. We embrace the new while respecting the old, and that much about Model Remodel will never change.
