Naming and brand identity

Cascade

Industry: Strategy consulting
Services: Naming, Brand strategy, Identity, Collateral and website
Location: South Africa

01 Introduction

Cascade helps leaders close the gap between strategy and execution. It used to trade as VM Services. It needed a name and an identity as clear as its method, and we made both.

02 The position

Twenty years under the wrong name

What the renaming had to fix.

The method was clear and the name was not.

Cascade had practised for more than twenty years as VM Services, a name that described a company rather than a method. The work is making the direction set at the top survive the trip down into delivery. We named the firm for exactly that, and more than 60 clients across more than 18 industries now sit under one name.

03 The name

We named it Cascade, for strategy that flows down into the work.

Direction is set at the top and flows down through the organisation until it turns into delivery. Strategy that cascades is the method and the name.

04 The mark

One letter is a flow.

The s in the wordmark is made from its neighbours. It is the a pouring into the c, so the direction set by one letter flows into delivery in the next. The idea lives inside the name itself.

05 Colour and type

A quiet palette with one flash of Electric Lime.

Deep greens read as calm authority and warm Oat works as paper. Electric Lime appears once in a layout to mark the moment something moves. Epilogue carries the headlines with the same rounded, flowing terminals as the mark, and Inter does the work in documents, decks and data.

Dark Ivory

Fern

Washed Teal

Oat

Electric Lime

Epilogue: Primary. Headlines
Inter: Secondary. Documents, decks and data

06 Pattern and photography

A pattern of arches moves down the page like water.

The pattern is built from the mark's curves and only ever flows downward. Photography follows the same thinking. Aerial roads, bridges and city lines stand in for strategy, and real work at real tables shows how it gets done.