HLE and Swiss Glascoat were two leading brands within the Glass-Lined Industrial Equipment manufacturers’ space. When these two powerhouses decided to join hands, the new resulting brand came with some serious bragging rights, and required an identity that was worthy of that alliance. That’s when they called us, and we got right on the case.
Large-scale corporate branding projects like this offer us a different kind of challenge than our usual fare, and we take on these projects only when we’re sure the client is willing to give us the freedom we need. Lucky for us, HLE Glascoat was the perfect brand for the job. And we couldn’t be happier with the identity we finally created for them.
We set out trying to capture the processes and systems their products follow, and we looked for insights and commonalities between the products themselves, to give us a seed of an idea upon which we could then build the brand. After a few conversations with the client, who are naturally experts in this field, we came upon 3 key points we needed our identity to convey:
The three key brand insights, explored visually
the cylinder, which is an integral part of all their products
the idea of input-output, in the context of the chemical reactions which go on inside these products
the glass-lined nature of all their products
The symbol, incorporating all three key brand insights into one beautiful little icon.
Working under the assumption that the brand still needed to be minimal and clear, telling three stories through one identity posed a challenge. But we figured it out, by creating an icon that represented all three of these insights in an abstract yet very clear manner. This symbol then formed the basis of the eventual identity, and is already synonymous with the HLE Glascoat brand.
Once we’d cracked this iconic symbol, the rest of the identity came together perfectly. While we made sure to still keep it corporate, the client agreed that it is already the most distinctive brand identity in the industry, and cuts through the clutter beautifully.
So the next time you’re in the market for some glass-lined heat exchangers, look for this symbol, and you would’ve chosen wisely.
DESIGN TEAM:
Tushar Menon & Arjun Rajkishore
Creative Director:
Vikram Bhalla
