Case study
January 2024
BV International reached out to us to design their brand identity and their marketing communications materials (consisting of the logo, identity structure, stationery package, a monthly summary and a presentation).
The creative design and production timeline:
Roughly two and a half weeks to deliver everything from concept to completion.
Brief
BV International Management 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 inefficient.
All they had was the logo below (which they said they were “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 we were more than happy to have a chance on delivering that help!
Above are the supplied materials we were to look at and use for the basis of the brand refresh we would produce.
SOLUTION
Our Creative Director decided we needed 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, he 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 our client—
”You guys really knocked it out of the park!”
Above is the final logo and an early concept model for the visual information design style. At the core, the pie chart on the left and the one above both display the same content sans the descriptive text, which we would treat differently in layout.
The design process
You have to start somewhere.
Of the six concepts we presented, the three presented here were our favorites. It was pretty cool that our client felt the same way.
Our Creative Director wanted to fall back on the magic of geometry for some solid design concepts. At their core, Options C and E are really the same logo.
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.
The creative team turned up the volume with color, made the typography more dynamic.
It worked!
The client chose Option E “as is” with the lemon-lime colors as their standard logo.
For the logo design presentation, we wanted to include small snippets 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.
The final logo design
After having designed the BV International logo and had established this as the BV International standard, it became apparent that our client might need a “BVI” logo as well without the word “International” spelled out. This will come into play later in this presentation and will again later.
Color system
The colors that were approved for the BV International logo were finalized using only the lemon and lime colors. The creative team 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 we did instead was to use a variety of colors to be used on sub-branding for accent colors, illustrations and diagrams—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.
With the approved color system in place, elements of the BV International’s logo design could extend onto other design elements.
The concept behind the design of the BV International logo was based on the visual of a global entity, but also 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 illustration is a close-up of how the two global design elements look up close, in detail. It is intended to reflect energy, intensity, and harmony.
The color system was designed to be almost unlimited in its combinations and color choices as shown in this mood board, comprised of some of the visual data we used on the BV International 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
Below are the stationery/letterhead and business card solutions.
These are somewhat toned down from the other marketing materials we created but do carry elements of those components with them to create a very minimalistic letterhead. Not only would this approach allow for a solid letterhead design, it could also be a backdrop for other elements of layout design such as the second and third pages of the monthly summary and across other components, as you can see below.
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.
Monthly summaries
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 info fit onto two pages while leaving the third page as a disclaimer, living on its own.
Click on any image to enlarge for details.
Presentation
We create our presentations using Adobe InDesign and make pdf’s from them. Our presentations are storytelling and not the usual PowerPoint deck 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.
