Who doesn’t love a brand mascot? For BD&R, the mascot came from the abbreviated letterforms we designed, but the idea and name itself came from the story of how the founders first met through business. That’s why I never start a project thinking about what the logo should look like. I ask questions. How did you meet? Why did you start? What makes you different? What stories have shaped the business? Because without that context, you’re designing on assumptions. And assumptions usually lead to work that blends in. My discovery process is personal to every founder we work with. The process might be similar, but what we uncover never is. Sometimes the best ideas are already sitting inside the business. You just have to discover them.

Great work

Frames from the Nexterra Branding & Website Project.

Nexterra builds and operates clean energy systems across five categories: solar, wind, hydroelectric, storage, and nuclear, including small modular reactors.

Every renewable energy brand reaches for the same visual shorthand: soft greens, leaf marks, rounded type. Nexterra needed to enter that category and immediately read as something else, a company confident enough in its technology that it didn't need to borrow the category's usual softness to be trusted.

We built an energetic identity that moves away from that usual muted earthy brand tone.

The logomark, a lightning bolt folded into the shape of an "N." It's built to work at favicon size and needs no supporting tagline to explain what it means.

Nexterra’s palette starts with a ashy null black that anchors every layer then splits into three energetic accents: Electric Yellow (Energy Generation), Safe Green (Energy Storage) and Cool Mint (Energy Grid).

The 2.5 dimensional illustrations took the most experimentation. It sits in between something that isn't quite flat and isn't quite 3D, with enough depth to feel real and also enough simplicity to comprehend what it represents.

Sick 🔥