Nori

Nori​’s mis­sion requires trust and trans­paren­cy, but its pre­vi­ous iden­ti­ty (fea­tur­ing an over­ly robust col­or­ful palette and opaque visu­al lan­guage) didn’t effec­tive­ly com­mu­ni­cate that. It need­ed a part­ner to help build a brand it could be proud of — a brand it could align with the impor­tant mis­sion it’s set out to achieve.

Nori’s cho­sen brand attrib­ut­es — Sci­en­tif­ic, Opti­mistic, Endur­ing — describe how the brand deserves to be per­ceived. We eval­u­at­ed Nori’s com­pet­i­tive land­scape and found brands with suc­cess­ful iden­ti­ties, but few who demon­strat­ed these par­tic­u­lar attributes.

We dis­tilled our eval­u­a­tion into a SMIT (Sin­gle Most Impor­tant Thing), Sci­ence-Backed San­guine, using it as the foun­da­tion for our rec­om­men­da­tions for Nori’s new brand. Chief among these rec­om­men­da­tions were: a refined palette; a pre­mi­um type sys­tem with clear hier­ar­chy; human­ized visu­al lan­guage; and a logo­mark that evokes trust and transparency.

We explored a num­ber of con­cepts for Nori’s logo, includ­ing refine­ments to and recon­struc­tions of the exist­ing logo. But of all our explo­rations, one mark direc­tion stood apart.

Nori’s new mark, Sea­weed, exudes Sci­ence-Backed San­guine on mul­ti­ple lev­els. The let­ter­mark smart­ly com­bines a down­ward arrow into the shape of an ​“N,” rep­re­sent­ing the brand name while also high­light­ing Nori’s ambi­tions for car­bon removal and its role as a con­nec­tor in the indus­try. The paths of the arrows form a leaf shape in the neg­a­tive space, fur­ther dri­ving the brand’s con­nec­tion with the environment. 

Nori’s logo­type is set in all-caps Euros­tile Extend­ed, with some slight let­ter­form alter­ations to make the mark more own­able and dis­tinct, fur­ther con­tribut­ing to a bal­anced and trust­wor­thy expression.

Nori’s new visu­al lan­guage was dri­ven by optimism.

The brand’s pri­ma­ry palette draws inspi­ra­tion from the wide range of col­ors found in nature, with deep and expres­sive Pine and Sand bal­anc­ing out vibrant Flo­ra and Glac­i­er. Nori’s sec­ondary palette pro­vides addi­tion­al oppor­tu­ni­ties to cre­ate hier­ar­chy and strik­ing col­or pair­ings through­out brand applications.

Nori’s pri­ma­ry type­face is a nuanced serif that con­veys human­i­ty and sophis­ti­ca­tion. Inter­na­cional, the sec­ondary type­face, com­bines mod­ern and clas­sic ele­ments to cre­ate an intel­li­gent and coher­ent impres­sion. The ter­tiary type­face, Akku­rat Mono, harkens Nori’s Sci­en­tif­ic brand attribute, inject­ing tech- and data-cen­tric impres­sions through its mono­space structure.

We iden­ti­fied four ways Nori’s art direc­tion could come to life. Arrows add aes­thet­ic inter­est while allud­ing to car­bon removal and the goal of decreas­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of green­house gasses in the atmos­phere. Images of clouds help round out com­po­si­tions and add dis­tinc­tion and own­abil­i­ty in a way that feels nat­ur­al, opti­mistic, and pos­i­tive. Nature pho­tog­ra­phy high­lights the ben­e­fits of a cli­mate with less car­bon diox­ide in the atmos­phere while posi­tion­ing Nori as a means to a clear­er future. And a data visu­al­iza­tion design sys­tem helps the brand clear­ly con­vey information.