West is a brand studio and a venture fund, focusing on launching purposeful brands into the world, and create lasting impact. Transforming visionary companies to category leaders is done through spearheaded strategy, thoughtful design, and selective funding. West was in need of a makeover, having been off the radar for quite some time - however - we didn’t want it to be a purely cosmetic fix. Instead we choose to do the bare minimum on the visual side (whilst still maintaining craft and detail), and putting more focus on how we could be more intentional as a team. We developed a simple visual system in black and white that did the job, a custom typeface solution, and a stationary system using leftover paper stock. We also started to host events in our studio space - featuring panel discussions on subjects that where close to our hearts (one example being The Future Of Food - a discussion with food innovators, chefs and experts focused on the rise of engineered food and the importance of balancing global demand with environmental sustainability).
We also started to give our favorite groups and organizations free access to our studio space for networking and building relationships.
Being such a small team, everybody needed to embody both the venture and studio side of West. Therefore we altered out corporate structure and voice, ditched the titles and formalities (whenever we could) and developed a causal communications strategy free from jargon.
