Aerolab

The road to a new Identity

May 2014 - Dec 2014

01

The_Beginning

Somewhere along the way we began to lose sight of our north but, as soon as we realized this, we returned to the road with new impetus. Fueled by our renewed energy, we began to grow, improving our processes and methods. We left these changes flow and decided to make them known to the world, translating them into our new visual identity.

02

The_Challenge

Working on oneself is always the biggest challenge, yet rewarding. It was exciting: in addition to the usual hard work of exploration, we came face to face with our own strengths and weaknesses.

It was necessary to

Show

that we had grown

Our strategy

Translate

this growth into a visual identity

&

Reposition

ourselves internationally

Launch

case studies of the processes

03

The_Approach

We defined our awesome Design Persona and worked on an art direction that suggested there was a message beyond the logotypes and color schemes. We looked for lists of psychological terms, and even took some personality tests to find the terms that identified us.

Branding

All of us have some salient personality traits, and others that can only be discovered by spending enough time together. We translated that concept into a graph of our Design Persona, getting a better idea of how and where Aerolab's traits would be shown in the visual identity.

Aerolab Persona Graph

Art Direction

At the beginning we had a visual system with lots of different variables. It was time to make decisions, but where did we start?

Exploring the area

We wanted to look neither boring nor informal, and also wanted our brand to be memorable without outshining our works. With this in mind, we organized several brainstorming sessions to take all the ideas from our heads to the paper.

Testing different paths

In a liberating and educational way, this allowed us to understand which ideas worked best and why, giving us the theoretical basis to support our final choices.

Testing paths in the design process

Choosing the right one

We created a system with enough parameters to maintain coherence along multiple design pieces, and flexible enough to suit the agency’s different needs.

Typographic system design

Color scheme

Black, white and light grey awoke our digital heart (you surely already know that pure black and white don’t exist as such in the real world). They also showed our flexible and neutral side and let the projects shine brighter, while orange showed our extroverted, informal and bold side.

Color scheme

Grid

Basic Unit

Grid basic unit

Modules to choose from

Grid modules

Photography

It showed that we are an actual agency, with real people working under the same roof (well... mostly). The photos kept it serious and showed our professional side. Oh, those pixelated bizarre gifs? That is our geek fun side, a subtle characteristic of the Aerolab persona. It's like in an interview: you won't dress like a clown; you will probably dress appropriately and make a joke every now and then.

Pixelated Image With Orange Gradient Map

aerolab photography orange gifs

Black & White (with level adjustments)

aerolab photography hero covers

Black & White (with level adjustments and black overlay 70%)

aerolab photography contact

Iconography

We are thinkers and extremely detailed on what we do, so we decided that the icons and illustrations were a subtle geek way of showing it.

aerolab iconography

Geometric Shapes

aerolab iconography geometry

Front Facing

aerolab iconography front facing

Symmetry

aerolab iconography symmetry aerolab iconography symmetry

Pixel Perfect

aerolab iconography pixel perfect

No Pixel Perfect

aerolab iconography no pixel perfect

Proportions

aerolab iconography proportions aerolab iconography proportions aerolab iconography proportions

Sizes

aerolab iconography sizes aerolab iconography sizes

Illustrations

Process

aerolab services illustrations aerolab services illustrations aerolab services illustrations aerolab services illustrations aerolab services illustrations

Team

aerolab team illustrations aerolab team illustrations

UI Design

The visuals were stripped from any unnecessary embellishments, in order to get the right message across. Instead of pursuing originality by breaking conventions, we strived to inject our creativity in the content through simple yet clever ways.

Cleaning up the road

Once we were on a clear visual direction, we focused our energy on synthesising the decisions we had made, to get rid of all the noise and leave only what was really necessary.

Our original website

aerolab browser view before

After the fine-tuning

aerolab browser view before