on the upswing

Agricolis
corporate identity and business cards

Friends approached me recently to create an identity for their start-up consultancy, Agricolis. The name, a Latin play on their surname Bauer (Farmer) naturally lends itself to their business focus of targeted development by way of investments, consulting, interim management and training. The challenge was to show growth without making them appear like organic farmers peddling tomatoes. 

 

Aside from a few identities which they provided as visual benchmarks and a clear desire to appear modern but experienced, the creative brief was fairly open. After the first round of brainstorming, it was apparent that they were looking for a clean, distinguished wordmark with some form of integrated element which could be extracted and used as a favicon or stand alone identifier. From the many variations I presented, the selected direction, set in efficient & geometric Futura, seemed to capture the sense of balance, integrity and waxing prosperity that they were after.

For now, it is a humble start-up, requiring only business cards, for which I did my best to convince the client on using Adobe Garamond as a trustworthy yet contrasting companion for communicative text to offset the wordmark's sans-serif starkness (i mean, if that pairing isn't modern and experience in and of itself!) The wordmark's flourish is used at a dramatic scale to more accurately convey its sense of expansion.

With new cards in hand, I can hope that their business is on the upswing.