Case study
Aera Energy A brand cut to the size of a trade show
An energy company sells itself at trade shows, not on a feed. We extended the Aera Energy identity onto the formats of that ground — feather flag, roll-up, business card — where you are judged first at five metres and then at fifty centimetres.
The context
Aera Energy gets known where companies in its sector get known: at trade shows, exhibitions and industry gatherings.
That is a ground with formats of its own, and those formats follow rules the digital world ignores. At a trade show you are judged twice, at two distances.
First at five metres, down an aisle, by somebody walking: at that distance there is no text and no argument, only a colour and a shape. Then at fifty centimetres, once they have stopped, when the same person looks for what you actually do — and there you need content, quickly legible, with no paragraphs.
A piece that fails at the first distance never gets read at the second.
What we produced
The identity, extended onto the materials of that ground.
Feather flags: the long distance
The flags carry Aera Energy’s distinctive colours and icons. Their job is to be identified from far off, in an aisle where ten others compete for the same glance — not to explain anything.
Roll-ups: the short distance
The roll-ups are built to be informative and arresting, with charts, icons and imagery that carry the message of sustainability and innovation.
It is the hardest piece of the set. It has to hold an argument without becoming a page of standing text — the commonest fault of the roll-up, recognisable by the fact that nobody ever reads one to the end.
Business cards: what is left afterwards
Cards in orange and green, the house palette, with a layout worked for legibility.
The business card is the only trade-show item that leaves with the person you met. It is read in the evening, out of context, usually among thirty others: what it has to produce is not an impression, it is a memory.
Mockups: seeing before producing
Mockups were made for the various applications, to see the materials in situation before sending them to print.
In print, that step is not a comfort: a mistake is not corrected by republishing, it is corrected by reprinting.
What it changes
Aera Energy arrives at a show with a coherent set rather than a collection of items ordered separately.
It is work that goes unnoticed when it is done well — and is noticed instantly when it is not, in the shade difference between a flag and a roll-up standing side by side.
More work
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