case study, Early 2024
A brand refresh, plus the development of a new identity design system
Brief
BV International Management is an investment group whose mission is to generate long-term capital appreciation by purchasing digital royalties from the entertainment business in markets that are difficult to price and/or inefficient. There’s a lot of it out there.
All they had was the logo below (which they said they were just “okay” with) and they had a presentation they put together themselves. The presentation wasn’t terrible, but it didn’t have the gusto they knew they would need to be seen or recognized. They knew they needed help—and I was happy to have a chance on delivering on that!
Caveat—I had roughly two and a half weeks to deliver everything from concept to completion.
Solution
I decided to create something that was bold, contemporary, and something that would stand out amongst their relatively stiff competition (think Round Hill Music, The Music Royalty Co., and Hipgnosis).
Plus, I wanted it to be edgy and take on an entertainment industry vibe—colorful and rhythmic—with factoids that would be captivating and memorable. It would also have to be informative on both BVI as well as the digital royalty industry.
According to my client—
”I really knocked it out of the park!”
This was the early concept model for how I would envision treating BVI’s visual data and display graphics. At its core, these are the same pie charts.
This would be reinterpreted again in both the summary and the presentation.
The design process
You have to start somewhere.
I had submitted several designs for logo/identity concepts for this project. The three presented here were my personal favorites. Fortunately, the client agreed—their focus was on these three as well. So far, a good start!
At their core, Options C and E are really the same logo. What makes them different is positioning and complexity of their elemental interaction.
Option C was an effort to pay homage to their original logo. However, Option E was intended to expand beyond the more subtle approach of Option C, and it was worth the risk.
I turned up the volume with color, made the typography more dynamic. And it worked.
The client chose Option E, “as is” with the lemon-lime colors as their standard logo.
For the logo design presentation, I wanted to include a small snippet of how the proposed brand might look using elements of design that could be used on the other marketing materials. That included icons, the sphere, and other hints of how any logo could further the branding effort for BVI.
Click on any image to enlarge for details.
final logo design
After having designed the BV International logo and had established this as the BV International standard, it became apparent that I would need a “BVI” logo as well without the word “International” spelled out.
This will come into play later in my presentation for the business cards specifically. It seemed like a good idea to have a solid, complete logo for BV International to have on hand for special events, premiums, et cetera.
Color system
The colors that were approved for the BV International logo were finalized using only the lemon and lime colors. I had expected to integrate the color palette for the logo to use at least six combinations of colors that could be used across a variety of print and digital media.
It made sense to limit the brand’s primary colors to include both black and white to the lemon and lime color palette. Using more color would only complicate the brand’s identity and could add to additional time in designing layouts.
What I did instead was to use a variety of colors to be used on sub-branding for accent colors, illustrations and diagrams—by using the integration the two-color blends to be used for BV International’s products and services (or applications). These colors are reserved for the secondary color palette.
Any remaining colors not isolated into the standard logo, or its applications would remain as tertiary colors for accent colors. This would be the core of the design for the business cards, summary, and presentation.
DESIGN SYSTEM
The anatomy of the BV International logo design would be the DNA beneath the sub-brands, industry icons, and other design elements to be used within BVI’s marketing collateral.
Using the color system I created, I could unclip the leash on how I could use color and BV International’s logo design to extend onto other design elements.
The concept behind the design of the BVI logo was based on the visual of a global entity, but as a double entendre. It is both a representation of the culmination of everything the entertainment business has to offer and how BV International is at the nucleus of this industry.
The color bands at the bottom of the logo layers combination is a close-up of how the two global design elements look in detail. It is intended to reflect energy, intensity, and harmony.
The design system was designed to be almost unlimited in its combinations of color choices as shown in this mood board, comprised of some of the visual data I had used on the BVI marketing collateral.
The concept was to use diagrams, factoids, or illustrations as dashboard displays as something suggesting to be visuals that might be found on tablets or streaming apps. They are designed to be busy, but structured and engaging.
STATIONERY PACKAGE
Presented here are the stationery/letterhead and business card solutions.
The letterhead is toned down from the other marketing materials but does implement elements of the core design elements to create a very minimalistic design.
Not only would this approach allow for a solid letterhead, it could also be a backdrop for other layouts such as the second and third pages of the monthly summary.
The business cards are designed to carry the tempo of the summary and presentation with printing on both sides. Here, we also catch a glimpse of the alternate BVI logo, which appears on the common reverse side of all cards.
promotional one sheet
This is the nitty gritty on the firm. The details, strategy overviews, investment allocation figures—complete transparency in a nutshell. Everything BVI has to share with qualifying investors.
This is also the rare exception when it comes to the summary exceeding two pages. The strategy here was to use as much of the content as possible and make the pertinent content fit onto two pages while leaving the third page as a disclaimer living on its own. Who reads them anyway?
Click on any image to enlarge for details.
After the logo was finalized, this was the first component I worked on. There’s a lot of information here and that would allow me to experiment some and get into the rhythm of how the presentation would be shaped.
PRESENTATION
I create our presentations using Adobe InDesign and make pdf’s from them. Our presentations are storytelling and not the usual PowerPoint decks filled with bulleted statements and slugs. Those are atrocious.
The pdf’s are smaller, cleaner and they allow the reader to fully understand a firm’s business strategy, due diligence process, and financial statements when necessary. They are designed to be storytelling and make for a clean marketing piece to distribute to potential new clients.
Click on any image to enlarge for details.
Above are select pages from the BVI presentation. First off, I wanted to use an image that captured both the essence of pleasure enjoyed by digital entertainment, but also took full advantage of using the secondary color palette. I chose the image on the front cover because it was an image that served both purposes perfectly. It’s like you can hear that cover.
Once inside the presentation, the potential investor is delivered all of the factual information pertaining to both the firm, BVI—as well as enlightening the reader of the value of the investment opportunity. Complete transparency, delivered in a way that is engaging, memorable, and relatable to its reader. And delivered with a vibe.
I designed and produced The above work for BV International as the Creative Director for Alpha Lab Creative.
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