In 2021, Pink Salt Ventures came to us for a brand refresh; they wanted to stand out. We began this project by conducting in-depth research on their audience and their three core audiences — female founders with scalable companies and limited partners, the investors in the fund who contribute capital to Pink Salt Ventures; to be pooled and invested.

This brand needed to speak the same language as the broader venture capital ecosystem - a community that included journalists, academics, and startup founders - each with their priorities and communicating their measurable approach to mature audiences such as governments and limited partners.

When creating this brand identity, our challenge was to communicate to and with a broad range of people, each with their own set of industry standards, whilst telling a unique and interesting story. We looked for a space between the laws of venture and the desire to tap into new generations’ unbridled energy and make design choices that would balance the brand’s spirit of adventure with a sense of security. We focused on the idea that starting a new business takes courage and adventure. To create an open visual design system that suggested independence, we sourced photographic imagery that captured the definition of “venture” - a risky or daring journey. Magnified images of the natural world become almost abstract to evoke calm and serenity and at the same time communicate the theme of putting oneself in the zone of unfamiliarity. When appropriate, Pink Salt Venture’s primary photographic system can be coupled with secondary imagery that features strong and in–control women; the characteristics found within the founders they support and essential to fuel a successful and profitable business.

To ensure we communicate how they offer a pair of safe hands, we selected a bold, robust primary typeface to reflect the brand’s pragmatic approach and coupled it with a classical, elegant and sophisticated sans-serif secondary typeface. The new PSV monogram and logotype found balance at the centre of these two ideas.

A crucial part of this project’s deliverables included building an editable pitch deck template that the founders could repeatedly use to secure investment. To ensure that they could maintain consistency, we compiled all brand assets into a clearly labelled filing system. We illustrated how and where to use everything into a brand book, allowing them to create on-brand newsletter templates and marketing materials without incurring additional costs by reaching out to a designer/ marketing team. As with all of our brand projects, we compiled everything into a brand book so that it’s clear where everything is at all times.

We worked with all existing branding assets to create a website that's easy for users to interact with, update, and for the PSV team to manage. We showed Samira and Saloni how to use all elements and ensured that it would be interactive and easy to navigate. We also included custom CSS to create stand-out features to ensure that their customers enjoy an interactive experience across both mobile and desktop versions.

Take a look at the custom built website and photoshoot that we created for them.