Halo Industries’ Visual Identity
Branding case study
While the number of people who recognize the need for design has increased in recent years, many of our conversations with founders today still revolve around understanding what design is and how it can add value to a company. Design’s direct contributions — user experience, interaction, interface, and visual design — are already understood, but there is more. A small understanding of design will produce aesthetically pleasing and easy-to-use products. With a deeper understanding, design can move the needle across entire organizations.
In one of my previous posts, I covered our own Prime Movers Lab brand. Now, we are kicking off a new series highlighting how we have helped portfolio companies create lovable brands. Today, we’re starting with Halo Industries.
When we first closed on our investment in Halo, we tried to figure out how to support them best. One of the top priorities was to help them attract new investors and talent with a stronger brand identity. In the course of a few months, we collaborated with Halo to come up with a 3-stage plan for their brand development that was unique to their needs.
The first stage was the immediate needs like a logo, a simple informational website, and an attractive pitch deck. The second and third phases were the expansion of brand applications such as marketing collateral, a more sophisticated website, user experience & user interface design that we will revisit. Recently, they began preparing for winterization so we thought it’d be a great idea to revisit the branding work we did a while ago and improve it to withstand the harsh weather.
They were still in stealth mode when we first invested. They didn’t want to reveal too much detail about their approach and target markets, so we kicked off with a brainstorming workshop to gather information for the team to know what they had in mind. After piles of sticky notes and messy whiteboards, we nailed the core brand attributes that captured how they wanted to be perceived: technically cool. The brand had to give customers and partners a feel for the innovation, not another boring laser company (although one would argue that lasers are never boring). Moreover, because the nature of the products was highly confidential, we looked at the whole product line and extracted only the parts that were generic enough to reveal to the public to use as the seed for the visual concept, which boils down to two things: lasers and materials.
Once we identified the core idea for the visual language, we expanded with their logo and supporting graphic devices such as imagery and photography treatment, icons, illustrations, and typefaces. After a few more workshop sessions, we settled on the primary tagline for a general audience and investors: “Novel laser-based hardware systems for materials fabrication that help manufacturers drastically reduce waste, improve quality and enable next-generation technologies.” It is a bit wordy, but it captures the essence of what they do pretty well in the most concise way. We also developed a supporting tagline to attract talent: “World-class innovators that are excited about making an outsized positive global impact.”
The two rectangles with a gap in the middle make the letter H, and the ring on top is the halo. There’s also a subtle gradient, which again reinforces the halo concept. The color palette is based on design research looking into laser applications and machinery. We also applied an overlay of the respective color gradient as a top layer on imagery to strengthen the identity. The choice for imagery is a tad abstract to give a slightly futuristic vibe while allowing for more flexible interpretations, so they are not locked up with only lasers and manufacturing if they expand their verticals in the future.
Since our initial work, Halo has progressed significantly and is now in the process of creating a visually engaging website and materials that more accurately highlight where Halo is as a company. Stay tuned for my next blog about how our team of trusted design partners is supercharging Halo and our other portfolio companies’ brands.
Prime Movers Lab invests in breakthrough scientific startups founded by Prime Movers, the inventors who transform billions of lives. We invest in companies reinventing energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation, and agriculture.
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