ION

Client: ION Group, Enterprise

Brand Evolution
Brand Systems
Digital Design
Print Design
Event Design
Art Direction

Originally created in 2016 by creative agency FutureBrand, the ION visual guidelines didn’t solve a gap with business structure, making the brand difficult to understand.

As Brand Designer, I helped steer the visual identity into a direction that felt closer to the spirit ION embodied. My direct contribution was developing and evolving ION’s visual identity and built the systems that supported its use across channels. Through various years of business pivots, conversations about brand positioning, a design team, the visual identity has landed where it is today.

Challenge & Approach

A house of brands.

From mergers happening up to twice a year, to a library of products on the website, the brand needed a visual system that encased portfolios and their products. This system needed to work through all of branded touch-points, ensuring a consistency in visual language with intended order and clarity.

Refocusing the identity.

With a clear understanding of the brand structure, the identity was reviewed to restructure elements in a way that could sustain the structure and growth, while reflecting ION’s core values. Which led to revising the identity’s mood from multi-colored to a grounded expression.

Lock-ups

Creating distinction at this level was very important, because it helped customers understand which portfolio of products to look for.

Portfolios

A color was assigned to each portfolio using ION’s color palette, followed by a lock-up using ION’s unique designed font “Expression”. Originally intended as a way to create visual flair on words like “Automat[ion]”, “Innovat[ion]”, they served as a way to create a branded logotype.

Products

To find a way to unify over 40 products, the solution was to encase their logos in a circle and replace their logotype with IONs font. In many cases, like Openlink, the logos needed to be reworked to account for legibility as software icons.

Building Structure

Once the portfolio and product lockups were strategized, the product, content, and social media team provided structure for all their marketing collateral, to build a system around business needs.

Graphical Elements

To refocus ION’s mood, elements like illustrations and their concepts were reframed to not take center stage. A concept that was retained was the relationship between the center of the ION logo (nucleus) and it’s surrounding circles (ions).

By maximizing the size of the nucleus and creating a relationship with a single ion, the negative space created a sophisticated balance that mirrored ION’s brand direction.

Other strategies were recorded in ways to use the nucleus beyond this application.

The A4 Collateral System

Having the fields of content finalized, the work was to create a system that gave prominence to the portfolio, product and type of document, while being flexible for content in various lengths.

A grid was created to provide structure and design leeway, while content was anchored to paragraph and character styles. Specs were documented for product lock-up placement and size, to maintain consistency, as the CC Library was used to host the assets.

The Social Media Tile System

A series of social media tile templates were created following ION’s presence on LinkedIN and Twitter.

The system covered product updates, event communication (reminder, speakers), document releases (case studies, fact sheets), award announcements, among other posts.

Tradeshow Booth System

IONs high-volume event presence led to creating a general template serving as a way to speed production, providing a general framework for designers to structure designs.

These structures took into account legibility, and areas dictated for content that prevented blockage from attendees.

Outcome

Years of collaborative refinement evolved ION’s identity into a bold, cohesive brand, often reflecting the owner’s vision. The clearer hierarchy connected its portfolios and products, which has brought order as the business model grows.

Across collateral, social media, and events, flexible systems accelerated production and gave teams greater confidence in applying the identity consistently—creating a foundation that could grow with ION.

Credit

Meredith Buck
Colleen Ehrhart
Daniel Lay
Richard Lee