2021 — 2026

Years

Identity · Guidelines · Print · Wayfinding · Motion

Scope

5 years

Duration

Visual identity, print, motion

Role

A special economic zone for technology and industry — with its own territory, resident companies, events and media. For five years I was the designer behind its visual identity: from the core idea to the last pylon screen.

So I changed everything around it.

The logo couldn’t change.

Case 01 | Identity system

Results

04

Motion

03

Print and space

02

Identity

Numbers and takeaways

Digest, billboards, pylons

Corporate, seasonal, wayfinding

Square, system, color, guidebook

01

The existing logo was fixed — approved and not up for discussion. On its own, though, it couldn’t carry a system: no frame, no rhythm, nothing to build layouts, signage or motion around. The task was to give the brand a complete visual language without redrawing a single line of the mark.

I placed the logo inside a white square. The square completed the sign — and became the module for everything else.

00 — The brief

01 — Identity

The white square gives the logo a stable, ownable container. Mark and square now read as one complex sign: it holds on any background, over photography, at any size. Nothing was redrawn — the logo was finished, not replaced.

01.1

Once the square existed, it became the grammar. Squares scale, stack, crop and frame — they build layouts, patterns and transitions. One set of rules produces covers, posters, signs and animation, without inventing a new answer each time.

01.2

I refined the palette so it behaves the same in print, on screens and on LED surfaces: one primary, a small set of supporting colors, and clear rules for which combinations are allowed and which aren’t.

01.3

Every rule is written down together with the reasoning behind it — why the square, why these proportions, why these colors. Rationale is what makes a system survive: contractors, printers and other designers apply it consistently because they understand it, not because they copy it.

01.4

Five years of daily production — corporate print, seasonal campaigns, signage and maps. Different jobs, different contractors, one recognizable brand.

02 — Print and space

The everyday surface of the brand: business cards, letterheads, folders, bags, flags and postcards. The square anchors every layout, so even small pieces are instantly on-brand.

02.1

Presentations are where most identities quietly break: twenty people, tight deadlines, everyone improvising. I built a slide system on the same square grid — title, section, data, image and quote layouts — so any deck looks like the brand, no matter who assembles it.

02.2

New Year and other occasions. Each got its own mood — illustration, accent colors, tone of voice — while the logo square and the grid stayed in place. Same brand, different temperature.

02.3

Signs, navigation, territory maps and schemes. Here the square stops being decoration and becomes a functional unit: it frames information, holds pictograms and keeps every sign consistent — from the main entrance to an office door.

02.4

I use generative AI as a production tool, not a replacement for design. I direct the images — subject, light, palette — then bring them into the system: cropped into the square, set on the grid, paired with brand type. The result reads as the brand, not as a stock AI picture. Faster concepts, the same rules.

02.5

Not everything fits a template. Photo zones, steles, large-scale schemes — one-off objects with their own scale, materials and constraints. Each was designed from scratch, yet still built from the same square, so even the unusual pieces are unmistakably part of the brand.

02.6

It scales, slides, opens and frames. Motion was built on the same logic as print, so a five-second billboard spot and a monthly video clearly belong to the same brand.

03 — Motion

A monthly video roundup of the zone’s news. I designed the intro and outro — twice, as the brand matured — and handled the editing and all on-screen typography: titles, lower thirds, data and end cards.

03.1

A steady stream of 5- and 10-second animated spots: events, announcements, holidays. Short enough to catch a passing car, readable from a distance, and assembled from the same square system — which is what made the volume possible.

03.2

Every spot was then adapted for vertical pylons. Not cropped — recomposed. The square grid made it possible to rebuild each layout for a tall, narrow screen while keeping timing and message intact.

03.3

04 — Results

What I took from it

Not being allowed to touch the logo pushed me to a better answer than a redesign would have been: one simple module that carried the brand through five years and every format we needed — paper, metal, LED and video.

A constraint is a brief in disguise.