Ship Bottom Fire Company Maltese Cross & Patch Rebranding | LBI, NJ

Good rebranding does not always mean starting over. Sometimes the strongest identity comes from understanding what should be preserved and finding a better way to carry that history forward.

Typestries worked with Ship Bottom Volunteer Fire Company on Long Beach Island to develop a new Maltese cross and company patch design. The goal was to create a more traditional fire-service identity while retaining the visual elements that had become part of the department’s history.

The previous shield included an illustration of the wreck of the Fortuna, an important local reference that helped make the department’s identity uniquely Ship Bottom. Rather than discard that history, we incorporated the established imagery into a more traditional Maltese cross format and refined the overall presentation for a stronger, more cohesive fire company brand.

The project extended beyond creating a new emblem. Once the design was finalized, Typestries produced and installed the new Maltese cross graphics across the department’s fire apparatus and company vehicles, giving the fleet a consistent visual identity.

Fire department branding carries more meaning than a typical logo. It appears on apparatus, uniforms, signs, equipment and community materials, often for decades. A successful redesign needs to respect tradition while also working cleanly and consistently across all of those applications.

This project is a good example of how Typestries approaches branding: preserve what has meaning, improve what can work better, and build a visual system that can serve the organization for years to come.

Typestries provides logo development, emergency vehicle graphics, apparatus lettering, reflective graphics and complete visual branding for fire departments, EMS agencies and other emergency-service organizations throughout New Jersey.

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