Description:

Ethos Urban is a leading Australian urban development company. They bring together multiple disciplines under one roof including planning, economics, engagement, project advisory and management, social strategy, and design.

Over time Ethos Urban had acquired multiple companies across different states to enable them to offer the complex mix of skills and services required to deliver projects end to end. As a result, they were struggling to express a clear vision of what the company does. They needed a brand that would help them tell a simple story to clients and partners, as well as galvanise the newly integrated team to operate as one.

Thinking

To progress a project from planning all the way to completion takes a unique mix of skills. Every step feeds into the next to ensure the project keeps moving forward, and ends up delivering exactly what it set out to. For Ethos Urban, we expressed the coming together of these steps as ‘collective intelligence’. In essence, it’s not simply Ethos Urban’s diversity of skills that makes them so successful – it's the way they work together. ‘Collective intelligence’ became a powerful way for us to capture what differentiates Ethos Urban.

Concept

Ethos Urban’s ‘collective intelligence’ makes them unique. Realising the E and U of Ethos Urban fit snugly, we brought them together in the logo, for a fitting evocation of ‘collective intelligence’ in its simplest form. This became the basis of a highly expressive design system. By leaning into interesting combinations and contrasts, while keeping the EU of Ethos Urban at its core, the system is able to convey the company’s ability to deliver best in class solutions by enabling different experts and ideas to intertwine.

Execution

The new brand positions Ethos Urban within their category, while at the same time helping them push beyond it. For starters, the system can easily incorporate the supplied imagery and renders that are a hallmark of development projects in a way that feels fresh and ownable.

But it also goes a step further. As for many brands, finding imagery to accompany everything from proposals to marketing collateral is a constant struggle, particularly with projects that are still in development. By creating a library of expressive 3D assets we gave Ethos Urban the flexibility to tell their story in interesting and ownable ways. These assets bring to life the spaces and surfaces that are at the heart of what Ethos Urban do, and reduce the reliance on generic stock photography.

The refreshed brand captures the essence of an organisation whose foundations lie in collective intelligence. From the bold system to the bright colour palette to the expressive 3D assets, Ethos Urban can now tell its unique story with clarity and impact.