Here are just a few identity work case studies. I do much more than brand and identity - to see the clients and scope of services of my strategic practice, check out our company website.

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IDENTITY WORK CASE STUDIES

WeFi
This Lightspeed-, Pitango-, and Gemini-funded startup was originally known as Contigo Mobility. The company is creating a WiFi social network tied together by users’ wireless access points, allowing users to find friends and to meet like-minded people and to access services and information based on location. “Contigo” (“with you”) conveyed the sense of togetherness sought by the founders (including Yossi Vardi, founder of ICQ). However, the word is too ubiquitous to successfully brand a company (as well as being difficult to trademark), and the investors and founders alike wanted a simple name suitable for the US market. WeFi was a serendipitous idea.  In four letters, it conveyed both community and wireless.  I was able to purchase the .com domain for a very low price. The logo is cheerful but not toylike, conveying a sense of fun while also instilling confidence in both the business community and in users reluctant to download yet another client application. The use of grey, blue, and chartreuse is intended to keep a cool feeling, as well as being a scheme relatively underused in Web 2.0 logos at the time. The optimistic “splash” sends a message that WeFi expands your connectivity, helps you reach out into the world both virtually and physically, and in general makes your life better! WeFi is such a succinct name for this business that my brainstormers had a hard time with taglines, feeling that the name itself conveyed the business so well. In the end we settled on two tags: “Connection. Content. Community.” for business applications, and “WiFi anywhere. Friends everywhere.” for the consumer-focused social network side of the business.

GoTV Networks
This Bessemer- and Charles River-backed mobile video provider was a shell company, called V-Star from an early incarnation creating cellphone avatars. The company was best known by its lead product name, 1KTV, so named because it required 1K of bandwidth to push to the phone. This was not what you’d call a consumer brand!  The rebrand needed to happen in less than four weeks, between funding and the March 2005 CTIA conference. Our executive team wanted to keep “TV” in the name, as mobile television was still a new concept to consumers. Naturally, whatever I paired with “TV” needed to convey mobility. The name also needed to be short, so as to easily fit the character limits on the mobile handset “decks” from which subscribers generally purchased the company’s products.  “Go” was a dream brand. I was amazed that the trademark was available (it had been owned and allowed to lapse) and snapped it up. While “GoTV” is a great consumer brand, I added “Networks” for business usage and as the parent company name.  The logo makes use of two colors which are consumer-friendly and look very good on mobile screens: turquoise and orange. Incorporating the TV into the logo as one of the letters added a playful spirit and, again, gave us a small footprint logo for the extra-small screen. The orange TV provided a bright, clean graphic element, which we could pull out and use by itself for maximum impact in any environment; it also makes a great onscreen “bug”, or identifier, in the company’s programming. The TV eventually became an organic “character” which can be played with in a number of ways: the TV has been animated, has wiggled its antennae, has ridden a skateboard, and has fallen from the sky. It reminds me in spirit of the legendary mutable MTV logo in the ‘80s, and someday I’d love to see it in Claymation!