Elevating Entrust’s brand identity through creative collaboration
About Entrust
Entrust is a global leader in trusted digital identity, payment, and security solutions. The company provides secure identity, authentication, and encryption technologies to organizations worldwide.
With a focus on protecting digital information and enabling secure transactions, Entrust helps businesses and governments safeguard sensitive information, mitigate fraud, and ensure regulatory compliance through innovative technologies such as identity-based security, digital certificates (SSL/TLS), and public key infrastructure (PKI). Initiate provided dedicated creative support to Entrust for over two years.
A collaborative working relationship,
from the very start
Establishing a solid working relationship with Entrust’s VP of Brand has been a rewarding experience built through our collaboration at various companies over the years. Her deep knowledge of the design industry led her to engage us for regular design projects at Entrust. Like 90% of our clients, this partnership was rekindled due to our shared values and passion for quality design. To that, we enthusiastically say, yes, please!
The impact of brand: Initiate redesigns Entrust’s brand guidelines
We’ve done a flurry of design projects for Entrust so far. We started by designing specific campaign-related projects, such as reports and infographics, social cards and supported bigger campaigns and individual one-off projects with high-level creativity.
However, when the team needed to reference brand examples for new deliverables, the existing brand guidelines didn’t have any relevant examples and didn’t align with the vision moving forward. Michael encouraged Entrust’s marketing team to completely redesign the brand guidelines, including tweaking the brand’s colours and ensuring up-to-date visuals and language.
Initiate dove into every single piece of design the company was using. We completed a thorough analysis of all their collateral, sales presentations, and advertising, and determined the right direction for change—as needed.
Throughout this project, many new ways to visualize the brand were updated. Initiate worked closely with Entrust’s Director of Brand Strategy over six months, to complete this project and finalize the guidelines. Overall, it was an impactful, timely, and successful project.
Why brand guidelines matter
Brand guidelines are crucial as they ensure consistency and coherence in how a brand is presented across all platforms and communications. They define the brand’s visual and verbal identity, including logos, colour palette, typography, tone of voice, and messaging, which helps in creating a recognizable and professional image. By providing clear rules and standards, brand guidelines help maintain brand integrity, build trust with audiences, and differentiate the brand from competitors. They also streamline the design process, making it easier for teams to create aligned and cohesive content that reinforces the brand’s values and message.
What came after the branding work
Coming out of the guidelines project, our team helped develop a consistent visual style for Entrust’s social media posts. Developing a series of visuals that helped tell a story versus simply communicating a detail. Our application of Entrust’s ‘hex’ element was key to developing an emotive and consistent visual voice for social.
Today, we provide comprehensive production support for the company, designing brochures, data sheets, and other sales-supporting collateral. On top of this regular work, our creative team meets with Entrust to execute larger campaigns and deliverables.
The secret sauce to Initiate’s and Entrust’s great working relationship
From the very beginning, our relationship was based on open communication. Over time, we developed an essential rapport with Entrust’s internal design team, who knows they can reach out to us anytime for support.
As an established company, Entrust has its own way of doing things. We respect this, working off of their requirements, and offering a new design point of view when needed. Over time, we’ve become more and more integrated as the trust grows. Because the company has a lot of products—the hardware division in the UK will have different needs than the sales team in the Midwest—we work with a variety of teams and our experience of working with different types of companies and industries is an asset.
Our experience, trust, and personal relationships set us apart. We offer a level of service Entrust wasn’t used to, providing a direct connection to a designer, upholding every deadline (and communicating about the ones that we may potentially miss—we’re human too), and fulfilling every request no matter how big or small.
Credits and thank yous
Creative lead
Michael Ball
Art direction
Jamie Willows
Carolyn Harman
Designers
Geneviève Lépine
Melanie Vandergaast
Owen Cameron
and team
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