illoominus

Illoomi­nus’ pre­vi­ous visu­al iden­ti­ty did not por­tray the grav­i­ty of what they’re accom­plish­ing: empow­er­ing orga­ni­za­tions to take action­able steps toward improv­ing their diver­si­ty, equi­ty, and inclu­sion. Illoomi­nus’ plat­form pro­vides HR pro­fes­sion­als with a sin­gle source of truth for col­lect­ing, imple­ment­ing, and mea­sur­ing DEI ini­tia­tives. Appro­pri­ate­ly, Illoomi­nus iden­ti­fied their brand attrib­ut­es as Encour­ag­ing, Pow­er­ful, and Insightful.

After an audi­ence and com­peti­tor analy­sis, it was time to devel­op a visu­al strat­e­gy to help the brand stand out in a crowd­ed mar­ket. We cre­at­ed mood boards based on Illoomi­nous’ brand attrib­ut­es. The Illoomi­nous team aligned on a direc­tion, cul­mi­nat­ing in iden­ti­fy­ing the Sin­gle Most Impor­tant Thing to get right in their visu­al iden­ti­ty: Sim­ple. Soul­ful. Solved.

Our first round of ideation began with a few visu­al con­cepts: ​“Lampyris,” ​“Thor­ough­fare,” and ​“Day­break.”

Inspired by fire­flies light­ing the night sky and illu­mi­nat­ing a path for­ward, ​“Lampyris” rep­re­sented the role that Illoomi­nus plays in the DEI HR land­scape. The design in ​“Thor­ough­fare” was inspired by wind­ing roads, sym­bol­iz­ing a busi­ness’ jour­ney to DEI suc­cess with Illoomi­nous to guide them. Final­ly, ​“Day­break” was the most on-the-nose con­cept, rep­re­sent­ed by a sun­rise-inspired mark.

Of the pre­sent­ed con­cepts, ​“Lampyris” won out. How­ev­er, the Illoomi­nous team res­onat­ed with the sto­ry­telling behind the wind­ing visu­al lan­guage ele­ment from the ​“Thor­ough­fare” con­cept. We were able to apply ele­gance and abstrac­tion to the unique wind­ing flight pat­terns of the fire­fly, cre­at­ing a scal­able visu­al lan­guage ele­ment that still ties close­ly to the brand’s mis­sion. With this new cen­tral­ized visu­al direc­tion, Illoomi­nus was well on its way to its final­ized brand.

Based on feed­back, we shift­ed the col­or palette to be ground­ed in a dusty navy col­or that we dubbed Gen­tian, after the blue flower. The col­or fam­i­ly now had a bal­ance of light and dark, cool and warm, and bright and sub­dued. This cre­ated a well-round­ed brand col­orscape that feels more rep­re­sen­ta­tive and inclu­sive. Each col­or received a new moniker inspired by flow­ers and fau­na. This was yet anoth­er way to high­light Illoomi­nus’ com­mit­ment to growth.

Uti­liz­ing GT Alpina as the type­face for the logo­type was an easy choice. It has the friend­ly yet refined air that we were look­ing for with the Lampyris con­cept. The logo­type felt mod­ern but endur­ing, fresh but time­less. We also want­ed to off­set the rec­ti­tude of GT Alpina by inject­ing some casu­al­ness into the brand. GT Wal­sheim is famil­iar in the tech land­scape, but it isn’t over­done. It con­tains the per­fect amount of leg­i­bil­i­ty and pre­ci­sion to act as the brand’s sec­ondary typeface.

Through our Brand Sup­port offer­ing, we were able to offer Illoomi­nus the assets need­ed to imple­ment their new brand. We reskinned exist­ing key pages to estab­lish an on-brand visu­al web expe­ri­ence. We also made a one pager and an illus­tra­tion for the employ­ee journey.