Blackwood Groves is a 119-acre mixed-use, master-planned community in south Bozeman, Montana — developed by Bridger Land Group a couple of miles from downtown, with 360° views of four mountain ranges and Montana State University a mile north. It was planned as Bozeman's first truly mixed-income, mixed-demographic neighborhood: single-family homes, cottages, townhomes, apartments, and condos wrapped around a walkable town center, parks, trails, and community farms. Bridger brought Uncomn on as the branding and marketing partner — alongside a national team of planners and architects — to build a brand elastic enough to hold all of it together.

Challenge

Most community brands only have to speak to one kind of resident. Blackwood Groves had to speak to all of them — students and young professionals, families, downsizing seniors, first-time buyers and renters — across for-sale and for-rent product at very different price points, plus a retail town center meant to draw the whole south side of Bozeman. The brand had to scale from a single cottage sign to a mixed-use village storefront without fracturing, feel unmistakably Montana without leaning on cliché, and carry the community's real ambition: walkability, nature, and genuine mixed-income inclusion in one of the fastest-growing small cities in the country.

Solution

Uncomn built a scalable brand system designed to stretch across the entire community — logo and lockups (from the deep "Blackwood" palette to a warmer "Golden Hour" variant), color, typography, pattern, and a Montana-rooted photography direction. From that foundation we built the brand identity, the signage program (monument, wayfinding, construction wraps, and lot signs), and the community website — one system carried from a cottage sign to the town center, and extended into neighborhood sub-brands like the Cottages as they came online. The community has since earned national Best in American Living recognition and is now leasing.