DIRTT Brand Evolution
As DIRTT’s first Creative Director my primary mission was clear: evolve the company’s brand to elevate DIRTT's story, value, and offer. DIRTT had an awareness problem and the rebrand needed to work hard to instill confidence with both new and existing customers.
DIRTT’s previous brand expression presented DIRTT as a technology solution and attempted to bring its quirky and service-oriented culture to life online. Previous leaders had also put odd rules in place: no mention of products, singular audience focus, limited photography of actual DIRTT spaces. We needed to rewrite the rules.
I was responsible for the delivery of an updated brand strategy, standards for brand expression including new logo marks, typography, color, graphic language, and guidelines for photography, motion, art direction, and branded environments.
Inspired by mid-century modernist and industrial design tropes, DIRTT’s new brand system is designed to bring awareness, structure, class, and clarity to the organization. Using a minimalist approach, the new brand leverages simplicity to achieve clarity and intentionality.
DIRTT is an agile construction system used for interior placemaking. Its flexibility is a critical selling point and DIRTT’s primary differentiator. More than anything, a post-pandemic workplace needs built-in flexibility not only to meet the needs of a hybrid workforce but also to physically adapt as employee needs or technology changes. The essence of the new DIRTT captures this sentiment conceptually as: strength through agility.
DIRTT’s new logo mark is the simplest expression of this concept.
The logomark is manipulated and expressed as a line graphic throughout the visual identity, designed to constantly evolve and adapt to its environment; whether it lives on its own, as a housing device for imagery and diagrams in digital or print collateral, or as a sympathetic co-branding element that can effortlessly integrate with our partner brands.
It’s malleable, not modular, which means that so long as our basic parameters are adhered to, anyone can make it their own. Designed to be flexible within bounds, it constantly evolves and adapts to its environment, just as a DIRTT space does.
The principles that differentiate DIRTT’s construction system also inform the brand system. Design should be symbiotic, agile, and efficient. It should draw from many sources and embrace the unique strength of collaboration, while being endlessly agile.
The new visual system utilizes a variety of versatile graphic elements that support type and imagery. These act as a device to communicate DIRTT’s values and strengthen brand recognition.
If DIRTT’s offer can be classified as agile environments designed to navigate change, then the role that its evolved brand will play over the course of the years ahead will follow a similar ethos. In a world of uncertainty the DIRTT brand is not just built for today, it’s building for tomorrow.