WELD, a US-based apparel supplier, has carved a niche for itself by producing distinctive caps and socks, offering both customisable blanks and its own branded pieces for leading independent labels.
As WELD’s reputation expanded, the team set out to update its website and turned to Belfast-based studio Angel & Anchor for support. But what started as a straightforward digital brief soon exposed deeper issues, revealing a brand that felt fragmented and inconsistent.
“We came into the project originally wanting a proper website, but after coming to Angel & Anchor with a ton of odds and ends, it was painfully obvious that we had a pretty scatterbrained graphic system that needed to be sorted before putting together a website,” says Stephen Thompson, partner at WELD.
This called for a comprehensive rebrand, but before Angel & Anchor could get to work, there was a lot they had to consider.
WELD’s monogram by Angel & Anchor
WELD’s visual identity is shaped as much by the brands it chooses to work with as by its own products. Its blanks and branded apparel act as a canvas for independent labels, and the style and personality of those brands are reflected back onto WELD itself.
“In a roundabout way, WELD’s brand is almost like the accumulation of the identities of every brand they work with,” says Ben Connolly, founder and creative director of Angel & Anchor.
These collaborations subtly define WELD’s identity. At the same time, WELD required a brand world strong enough to hold its own among the distinctive personalities of its collaborators, while positioning itself as a cut above its competition.
“The WELD brand itself is still significant, so it was important to have something that stood out amongst a lot of legacy brands offering something similar,” says Thompson.
As a result of a patchwork of influences, WELD’s identity already had a strong, eclectic character. This was palpable in their old website, which “felt like a collage of images and clippings,” says Connolly.
Instead of smoothing over that roughness, the studio chose to harness it, building a multi-mark identity system – a custom logotype and monogram, along with a toolkit of emblems, symbols, and taglines – that could flex across contexts.
Angel & Anchor’s rebrand for WELD
Workshops with WELD confirmed that its values lie in creativity, craftsmanship, and community – qualities better expressed through variety than uniformity.
“The goal was to create a whole brand world,” Connolly explains. “That meant developing loads of marks, taglines, and colours rather than leaning on a single logo, set in stone. We wanted an identity that felt irreverent, flexible, and more like an anti-traditional approach to branding – something that could live in different places without ever being pinned down to just one mark.”
That flexibility also allowed Angel & Anchor to capture the duality at the core of WELD – the grit of its industrial, manufacturing roots and the laid-back, free-spirited personality that runs through its culture.
The new identity holds those opposites in tension. A custom logotype and monogram that draws on stitching and structure is contrasted with playful taglines and nostalgic symbols like the galloping horse, which embodies both the hard-working “workhorse” and the freedom of the open road.
WELD’s multi-mark system
“The horse logo really stood out to us,” says Thompson. “It felt unexpected, but it conveyed strength, reliability, and a sense of timeless forward motion – a true representation of WELD without even having to use the name.”
Accompanying the horse symbol is a suite of marks – from a jagged sun that balances imperfection and structure to flags and patches that evoke nostalgia and Americana pride.
“WELD’s story really began with our trademark Field Trip Hat, an unstructured hat in colours and fabrics that are inspired by the hats we remember our dads wearing when we were young,” says Thompson. “So it made sense to have a visual language that called upon some nostalgia and Americana.”
That sense of heritage was paired with a focus on craft in the custom logotype, inspired by machine stitching, which directly nods to WELD’s embroidery and customisation services.
“We wanted it to carry that same offbeat spirit of the brand,” Connolly explains, “so we flipped the expected rules of a serif – making the thick parts thin and the thin parts thick – to give it a subtle, unexpected twist.”
Angel & Anchor’s rebrand for WELD
The ‘W’ from the logotype doubles as a visual motif, expanding into striking patterns and accents across the identity.
The logotype, and the monogram with the wonky ‘W,’ are paired with Activ Grotesk, chosen as the primary typeface. “We wanted something straightforward and utilitarian – the kind of type you’d see on a stitching machine manual or control panel,” says Connolly.
“It didn’t need much personality, because the brand’s character was already being expressed in so many other ways.” Meanwhile, Klim Type Foundry’s Pitch lends a typewriter flavour, functional at its core, but with subtle quirks that give it a mid-century, mechanical quality.
While the visual language was crafted to ground WELD in its industrial roots – structured, functional, tied to the act of making – the brand language gave Angel & Anchor space to mirror the irreverent, free-spirited nature of the brand.
Angel & Anchor’s rebrand for WELD
Taglines like “Garage Goofin’” embody a laid-back tone, while phrases like “WELD, dammit!” – held within the graphic of a waving flag – highlight the brand’s confidence and attitude.
To develop these tagline lockups, the team dug into mid-Century references to make sure the language felt authentic to WELD’s world.
“We looked at how manufacturers used to apply phrases on machinery, packaging, and steel badges,” Connolly explains. “Even small details, like how words were arched or set inside a mark, helped us create lockups that felt rooted in that world while still giving them a playful, modern edge.”
And the response to the new look has been immediate. “We’re already getting requests for retail products that feature our new marks,” says Thompson.
Angel & Anchor’s rebrand for WELD
Angel & Anchor’s rebrand for WELD
The ‘W’ from the logotype holds the ‘MFG’ mark