The Frontier Project

Background

The Frontier Project is a small consulting firm in Richmond, Virginia specializing in corporate culture, group dynamics, and individual skill and leadership development. They work with mostly Fortune 500 companies to ensure both groups and individuals can reach their full potential. Unlike many consulting firms, Frontier works with companies to execute on their proposed plans, rather than issuing recommendations and splitting. Therefore, over the years, Frontier has built internal capacity to implement plans that might include internal marketing campaigns, audio and video, custom workshop curriculum, and product development.

Challenge

The Frontier Project made the strategic decision to form subsidiary companies from their internal functions, so that each business could market not only to existing consulting clients but to outside prospects, as well. These companies were branded and marketed first with specialized iconography. Then with different names paired with the main company icon. The subsidiary companies expanded in number. Then contracted. Until it became clear that dealing with separate companies on one project led to increased confusion, decentralized communication, more administrative complication, and a less-than-ideal client experience.

Opportunity

Ultimately, with the functional streamlining, it made sense to bring the companies back under the main corporate umbrella. The learning and skill development business was the most fully developed and operationally independent sector, so the “academy” brand had earned a more distinguishing mark.

New Logo

Meanwhile, Frontier’s internal designers had several years of experience working with the faceted star icon and found it rather challenging in many applications. So I made the case, and was approved, to take away the shaded elements of the icon and leave the highly identifiable silhouette. The logo refresh also offered the opportunity to fix small size and spacing issues to improve readability and reproduction at small size.

Brand Architecture

Frontier Academy was kept as the sole sub-brand of The Frontier Project and maintained a similar but distinct brand that was slightly nerdier, bookish, and committed to learning. The main star iconography was incorporated into the academic pennant logo. Frontier Academy also had its own social media presence and produced a robust suite of workshop materials including slide decks, videos, worksheets, and workbooks.

Copy of The Frontier Project workbook for Influencing Stakeholders class

Graphic Standards

While we functioned pretty well in maintaining standards through observing precedent, it was time for a codified style guide, both for internal designers as well as contractors we frequently use. There was also a great deal of internal desire for a secondary palette. Frontier blue and black factored heavily—if not solely—in all company materials, but for social media and proposals, secondary colors would add much-needed accent.

carousel of fun stars created with physical objects

Visuals

The altered, flattened star allowed us to feature and play with it as a visual in new and fun ways.

I also elevated our didone typeface, which had been kept as an accept, to a higher-level component. In a world of sans serifs and heavy global usage of our primary typeface —Gotham—it added a more editorial and sophisticated tone to our communications.