Vital
CUSP AGENCY · VITAL MANAGEMENT · 2021
BRAND IDENTITY · GUIDELINES · WEBSITE DESIGN · B2B PLATFORM
CONTEXT
No name. No logo. No direction yet.
VITAL is a business coaching platform built for custom integrators: the people who design and install smart home and connected building systems for luxury residential and commercial clients. When I came on through CUSP Agency in 2021, the company was brand new. A group of industry veterans pooling their experience into something they believed the market needed. Nothing existed yet.
No logo, no colors, no tone of voice. Everything was built from scratch, entirely over Zoom.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
We tried the minimal route first.
The first direction we explored was clean and restrained. Closer to a luxury consulting firm than a coaching business. It made sense on paper: credible, high-end, professional.
VITAL's leadership pushed back. Their clients are contractors and business owners, not corporate executives. They wanted something that felt more like a smart coach drawing on a whiteboard than a pitch deck from a management firm. The hand-drawn, education-forward direction came from that conversation, and once we landed there, the whole system clicked into place.
LOGO SYSTEM
A circuit board grown into a tree.
The first direction we explored was clean and restrained. Closer to a luxury consulting firm than a coaching business. It made sense on paper: credible, high-end, professional.
VITAL's leadership pushed back. Their clients are contractors and business owners, not corporate executives. They wanted something that felt more like a smart coach drawing on a whiteboard than a pitch deck from a management firm. The hand-drawn, education-forward direction came from that conversation, and once we landed there, the whole system clicked into place.
LOGO OPTIONS ACROSS BACKGROUNDS · GREEN, WHITE, AND REVERSED VARIANTS
COLOR & TYPOGRAPHY
VITAL GREEN ANCHORS THE PALETTE
AVENIR PRIMARY, NUNITO SANS FOR WEB
ICONOGRAPHY
Icons built for a coaching context.
A full custom icon set was developed to work across marketing, presentations, and product. Each icon was designed in the same hand-drawn register as the broader visual language, then built out in three colorways for flexible application across light, green, and dark backgrounds.
HAND-DRAWN ILLUSTRATION SYSTEM
The whiteboard as a visual language.
The brand's core visual element is a library of hand-drawn, whiteboard-marker style graphics: charts, arrows, figures, vehicles, diagrams, and data visualizations, all in the same loose, sketched style.
It was a deliberate choice for the audience. Custom integrators are practical people. A brand that looks like it's explaining something on a whiteboard felt more credible than one that looked like it was trying to impress them.
BRAND VOICE ATTRIBUTES AND PERSONALITY FRAMING · DEVELOPED WITH VITAL LEADERSHIP
Defining what the brand sounds like.
The visual system was built alongside a full voice and personality framework. Attributes, linguistic cues, what the brand is and what it is not. This kind of work usually lives in strategy decks and gets forgotten. Putting it in the guidelines document alongside the logo rules meant it could actually be used.
WEBSITE DESIGN
The website was designed and built as part of the same engagement. I owned the design from structure to visual execution, working from the brand system to establish layout, hierarchy, and tone across the site. A project manager on the CUSP team later added functional widgets. The site has since been redesigned under new ownership.
APPLICATIONS
BUSINESS CARD
SOCIAL MEDIA
ADVERTORIAL
SOCIAL MEDIA AND ADVERTISING APPLICATIONS
SOCIAL MEDIA TREATMENT SPECS · LOGO PLACEMENT, SIZING, AND LOWER-THIRD RULE
The brand system shown here was developed in 2021. The company has since evolved under new leadership and the visual identity has been updated. The logo, color system, and foundational language built during this engagement remained in use through that transition.
SCOPE OF WORK
COLOR PALETTE CUSTOM ICONOGRAPHY
HAND-DRAWN ILLUSTRATION SYSTEM BRAND VOICE & PERSONALITY
BRAND GUIDELINES DOCUMENT WEBSITE DESIGN
SOCIAL MEDIA SPECS ASSET LIBRARY