Working within high growth dynamic startups it can often seem overwhelming to define a Brand. Everything changes so quickly and it can seem easier to hold off. But, even if you don’t define your Brand it is still being defined by the customer and context in which it is seen.
When my good friend Andrew Dawson called me about helping him with the Aether Diamond brand, I was immediately moved by the story of Founder and CEO Ryan Shearman. He shared a vision about building a business focused on capturing and converting excess carbon in the air via the most valued use of carbon, diamonds. Leveraging luxury to sustain the reduction carbon in our atmosphere is a delightful idea.
Aether diamonds were not only entirely created through sequestered carbon, but also through a process that’s carbon negative. The Aether process produces diamonds of exquisite quality but without the socioeconomic problems and the resultant impact to the environment from traditionally minded diamonds. Aether is a new definition of a diamond — ‘a diamond is that is forever ‘should be created from a process that extends the life of our planet, thus extending forever.
So the challenge for Aether was to build the beginnings of a brand that communicates quality and luxury that also challenges the conventions of the industry. A solution that is definitive enough to retain authenticity but open enough to allow the business to grow and stretch.
I wanted to see if we could materialize this new brand from thin air.
We knew Aether would need a monogram. ‘a mark of authenticity’ that differentiated an Aether diamond from others.
Both the CDO of Aether and I had been inspired by the alchemical symbol for air. The symbol, a triangle with a strike through it already looked like an initial. It just took three extra strokes and some adjustments to the geometry to give it the shape of an inverted diamond. The inversion implying new, the strike implying a challenge to the convention.
The mark could also become a container for the origin of the diamond. Unlike traditionally mined diamonds, an Aether Diamond comes from air. That air has a location, defined by longitude latitude and altitude and time.
The only other element needed to build a basic brand was a Wordmark.
The process of growing a diamond starts from a small seed, this seed is then grown slowly under the right conditions to become a large diamond. Materialization became the process for the Wordmark. Using a diamond grid and a process of scaling the word mark could grow from nothing.
The diamond grid becomes invisible scaffolding for all of the expression system.
We’re only at the beginning of Aether, but helping Ryan, Andrew and the rest of the Aether team find the beginnings of an expression system for such a compelling and futuristic business which values craft and quality is a dream.
Team
Marc Shillum – Brand Strategy and Design
Andrew Dawson – Chief Brand & Marketing Officer
Example Photography, Greg Delves and Sølve Sundsbø