Bitwise

Bit­wise rec­og­nized that their indus­try was inher­ent­ly seri­ous and often dry. Thus, they hoped to bring some fun and vibran­cy to their brand while remain­ing gen­uine and authen­tic. The Bit­wise team set­tled on the brand attrib­ut­es Pro­gres­sive, Craft­ed, and Vibrant. From there, it was up to us to build a brand that would pro­pel the com­pa­ny forward.

In the first round of ideation, the con­cep­tu­al direc­tions pre­sent­ed to Bit­wise were ​“Elab­o­rate­ly Sim­ple,” ​“Ground Cov­er,” and ​“Human Engi­neered.”

​“Elab­o­rate­ly Sim­ple” was pro­gres­sive in its approach to col­or, includ­ed an extreme­ly ver­sa­tile mark, and had a logo­type that strad­dled the line of tra­di­tion­al and mod­ern.

The ​“Ground Cov­er” direc­tion explored the rela­tion­ship of peo­ple and tech­nol­o­gy. We played with ways we could com­bine the two visu­al­ly to com­mu­ni­cate a har­mo­nious jux­ta­po­si­tion.

And final­ly, ​“Human Engi­neered” show­cased a logo­type com­plete­ly drawn from scratch that com­mu­ni­cat­ed human touch with a nod to technology.

With the pre­ferred direc­tion nar­rowed down to ​“Human Engi­neered,” we began hom­ing in on col­or and visu­al lan­guage. In addi­tion to the green-and-black palette, we want­ed to find oth­er options that were rel­e­vant and pleasing. 

​For the pat­tern style, we drew inspi­ra­tion from the linework in cir­cuit­ry dia­grams. Expand­ing on the W shape and straight lines com­mon­ly used, we also includ­ed curved lines and con­nec­tors to make the visu­al lan­guage real­ly robust and flexible.

Once the final refine­ments were made, we craft­ed their Brand Style Guide­lines. These guide­lines spell out how to bring the new brand to life, includ­ing col­ors, logo and mark para­me­ters, pat­terns, and more.

The com­plete­ly cus­tom word­mark com­mu­ni­cates exper­tise and approach­a­bil­i­ty while also lean­ing mod­ern with its mix of thin and thick strokes. In addi­tion, the mono­gram B was tak­en from the word­mark. It’s a bold visu­al that can be scaled up as a graph­i­cal ele­ment or scaled way down to fav­i­con size.

While blue may be com­mon in the com­pet­i­tive land­scape, there isn’t one quite like this. The light blue, yel­low, and green add a wel­com­ing vibe, while the dark blue and cream evoke trust­wor­thi­ness. Bitwise’s typog­ra­phy com­bines GT Ultra and GT Amer­i­ca to build type hier­ar­chy.

The pat­tern work intro­duced in the refine­ment process pre­sent­ed a great way to add visu­al intrigue to a com­po­si­tion. Based on cir­cuit­ry schemat­ics, it adds a craft­ed and vibrant feel to the over­all sys­tem. There were two dif­fer­ent ver­sions of this pat­tern: one that was more elab­o­rate (includ­ing W shapes, curved lines, and con­nec­tors), and one that was more sim­plis­tic (sole­ly W shapes and straight lines). Either can be used based on com­po­si­tion and complexity.