Adapttech: a new branding as powerful as our technology
This Tuesday, May 9, we are proud to present our new branding. A much needed change to reflect the evolution that our company went through this past few years, since it was founded.
This transformation, that the company is very proud, was developed by our Lead Designer Diogo Lopes and Marion Degorce, our design intern for this last few months. Even though, the whole team contributed with valuable inputs during the whole process.
A process that now Diogo unveils, explaining the whole concept behind the idea.
"Every company, no matter what they do, have an important statement that drives and focus a team into a project. This statement gives meaning to everything that is developed and guides the company towards an end goal. Internally this is easy to do, while interviewing people for each position, this is achieved by transmitting the company culture or “Dojo Kun” and can be also transmitted through day-by-day reminders in meetings or coffee breaks. The challenge is to communicate this idea, this culture, outside the office to the right people. At Adapttech, we felt the need re-think the corporate image because the team had grown and we want to create a good brand that represent us. The rebranding process began like every other one, we defined rules for development and identify Adapttech’s mission statement. The team defined three major points that would help us during development.
First, every team member had to participate in this project, with inputs, raising questions, providing visual references. Having discussions about every stage of development and making choices based on the team feedback.
Second, it had to be simple to understand and simple to apply. Since the re-branding would be made in-house by a very small team, we have to be smart for branding application, creating templates that would streamline the development of content and would help to maintain coherence.
Third, it couldn’t have very strict guidelines. When a brand has a lot of guidelines the creative freedom of the designer is removed. We only wanted the guidelines to guarantee readability.
Team feedback and discussing ideas
Adapttech is developing a product to help people that lost a leg to recover their mobility faster and with better comfort by providing better tools to help the prosthesis technician. Normally, an amputee had gone through a very traumatic experience, because of health reasons, accidents or war injury, is a sensible subject that needs to be treated very seriously. Our goal is not to be the cure or the solution of a problem but the fix for it. We adapt existing technologies to provide better care and comfort working around the problem.
On the other side, Adapttech is, even though with a very professional team, an informal company with a startup mentality that faces every challenge heads on with each individual team member doing what they love to do.
In other words there is a conflict between a very serious and professional company and the informal and lively office environment. The challenge was therefore to develop a visual language that would appeal to both characteristics of the company.
Starting with the development of the new brand for Adapttech we did visual research of company brands that are in a same business field and we also looked at startups, to understand the current state of branding in the healthcare and medical technologies. Then, we made a visual map of Adapttech technologies and their outcome, trying to find some visual feature that could stand out.
This research showed a lot of different ways to handle the new visual language for Adapttech but with the help of the whole team we sorted them into categories and chosed the examples that we liked the most and the ones that could be more related for Adapttech.
Filled with references and ideas, we started to sketch and discussing what could be Adapttech’s new logo and visual identity. We quickly realized that were no appropriate tangible symbols to represent the mix between professional and startup mentality and the concept of fix, adapting to a problem.
Through the research and testing we had a visual language aligned but we didn’t had any symbol. We thought on several ideas but all of them had different reading and wasn’t quickly associated with our company and we didn’t feel that would represent properly. This idea was to use the knowledge that people already have so they can easily understand what we do, to shorten the gap in communication, but it wasn’t an option.
During the "ideation phase", we tried to mix several symbols and icons until we got something that we could work. This was providing more interesting results and concepts that we could extend beyond the logo.
After several experiments, we opted to combine the silhouette of a person walking while the heel is striking the ground with a typographic approach using the letter “A”. This was the idea that the team supported the most. After that we started to develop and refine the symbol, testing different typefaces, colors and compositions, alongside with the team feedback we were able to find a solution that we are happy.
The applications we adopted the visual language of the logo and visual characteristic of our laser scanner, that creates sequences of circular lines and display abstract and yet familiar shapes based on the golden section. Testing for the applications were very important since it determined logo composition and if it would work properly in different supports, sizes and colors.
These elements placed together form the new Adapttech language, towards a serious market but with a youthful spirit and drive.
The goal now is to continue to develop the brand through digital and print applications, while maintaining consistency in the company communication, we want to give space to grow into something better.
Wally Olins said that branding is creating and sustaining trust in a company that consistently delivers what they promise in a coherent communication. Adapttech rebranding is one step in creating trust, now we will build on that with great technology."
