We met David through a bit of happenstance. A one-off shirt design for a small weightlifting Discord server alerted him of our existence just as he was looking to rebrand his business. After a bit of conversation, David was gracious enough to put his faith in our young, upstart studio, and we got to work.
David Nix Associates (DNA) is a tech consulting firm, focused on helping great companies looking or innovative, complete solutions to their difficult tech problems. DNA takes on the toughest jobs and prides themselves on creating permanent solutions, not quick fixes.
Our goal was to bring a fresh, youthful energy to the brand that would still successfully reach the (usually older) high level executives that DNA sells to. We wanted to position the brand as modern, but experienced; fresh, but sophisticated; innovative, but reliable.
David Nix Associates had already been using DNA as a shorthand. It’s a perfect starting place for a logo: a quick, readable, highly memorable set of letters that immediately conjures imagery from school textbooks and PBS shows. We loved it, so we leaned into it.
Our initial concepts referenced DNA directly, with looping helixes and strands of cells. There was some cool stuff in there, but it all felt a little too obvious, a little cliche. When we moved away from literal representation, things started to click. We connected the idea of DNA as the ‘building blocks’ of the body with pixels, a shorthand for tech and the symbolic building blocks of software and digital products. (We know software isn’t literally built out of pixels, it’s a bunch of 1’s and 0’s, or some code or something, don’t ask us, we’re the designers not the tech consultants.) Moving into the rest of the brand, pixels became a secondary graphic element, first as an upward arrow in our secondary logos, then a part of the full wordmark, and then into the icons, graphics, and illustrations.
A few months after the brand finished, we started in on the website. We wanted to keep the structure fairly simple, while really expressing the personality and quality that we had developed in the branding. DNA's site is built to push people to scheduling a free consultation meeting, so we made that the priority with repeated calls to action.
Anchoring the home page are a set of custom isometric animations, leading visitors through the story of how DNA will fix all of their toughest technology challenges.
