A COMPANY FROM A BLANK PAGE.
Most briefs start with something to fix. This one started with nothing at all: a South African trading company that existed as an intention and a set of contacts, and needed to become a thing customers could find, check and believe. We built the whole public face — the name on the door, the site behind it and the accounts that speak for it.
THE BUILD
Everything a company shows the world, made in one pass so it agrees with itself. Here is what was made.
A mark, a palette and a type scale that work on a bill of lading, a truck door and a phone.
Written for a buyer checking whether this company is real: what it moves, where it operates, and who answers.
Set up properly rather than merely created — named consistently, cross-linked, and handed over with a schedule somebody can keep.
Built in Hyderabad for South Africa, so every decision was checked against how it reads there rather than how it reads to us.
HOW IT WAS MADE
PHASE 01: THE DEFINITION
Before a logo, a paragraph: what this company does, for whom, and what it will not take on. A company with no history has nothing else to be judged on, so the sentence has to hold. 90
PHASE 02: THE BUILD
Identity, site and channels made together rather than in sequence. Doing them in one pass is the only way a new company looks like one company instead of three suppliers.
PHASE 03: THE FIRST NINETY DAYS
A launch schedule the client can run without us: what to post, in what order, and what to stop doing if the week gets away from them. New companies do not fail at launch, they fail in month three.
WHAT WE LEARNED
A company with no history is judged on coherence, because there is nothing else to judge. That is why the identity, the site and the channels were made in one pass rather than in sequence — three suppliers working in order produce three companies.
The ninety-day schedule matters more than the launch. New companies rarely fail in week one; they fail in month three, when whoever was posting gets busy. So the handover is a plan somebody can keep on a bad week, not a content calendar that assumes a good one.
"A new company is judged on coherence, because there is nothing else to judge it on yet."
WANT TO START A
Days planned.
Our calendar for the next quarter is filling up fast. If you're tired of being a "safe" brand, come talk to the Syndicate. We'll make sure they never forget your name.