Designing a brand system for an investment group: the MISA Group case study

For energy investment company MISA Group we built a new investment group brand system outwards from an identity created in Ghana, into patterns, animation and colour that now run across the business. The starting point was their new website, the big picture was making a portfolio of different businesses and charitable foundations feel like one.

So much of our work relates to a design that really means something, bridging the space between the business we’re working with and their audience in a manner that is both creative and has integrity. What is particularly interesting about our recent project for MISA Group is that it began with this rare combination of qualities built in from the beginning.

The team approached us having spent the spring working with Ghanaian designer Kwaku Opoku who had created an identity for MISA, a newly formed umbrella company for a series of energy businesses. The symbolism and originality came from west Africa, the region where the group has most of its portfolio. It’s where we begin with this project because this work shaped everything that came next, offering us the opportunity to build outward as we began work on first the new group website and then on to PowerPoint and brochure projects.

How we close the gap between an identity and a brand

From the beginning, MISA Group drove this project with a sense of purpose delivered with momentum. Sometimes a project with a hard deadline can mean compromises on the quality of brand development, but with this piece of work, the pace felt like a natural continuation of the work Kwaku had been doing. The team at MISA were keen for us to use not only the new identity but a series of gentle, at times irregular patterns that were inspired by the logo and the placing and repetition of the tradition of both Adinkra symbology and kente cloth, the handwoven textile native to Ghana.

This idea of pattern and meaning has been a real theme of our work this year, firstly with our recent work for Chartered financial planning firm Henwood Court and now this project. While there are common threads between these two pieces of work, we really enjoyed the fact that MISA Group is not only stylistically worlds apart but a very different sort of firm. Designing a brand system for a holding company means combining a sense of confidence in one central concept while allowing real variety across the board. In this instance the website had to accommodate a group of conventional energy businesses, an infrastructure developer, a biofuels venture, as well as two charitable foundations.

The new brand needed to stand up in front of investors, counterparties and operators, designing for the energy sector across every medium the group uses, holding all this together in a singular style. This brief felt different from many others because we were presenting elements that belonged together using a new system from the very place the companies are making a difference. As MISA’s Lucy McAndrew explained when we spoke recently, “the group has been operating in these markets for decades. The familiarity most investors don’t have is where we start.”

Turning a framework system into a visual language

The element that ties the new MISA Group website together is undeniably these patterns which we applied across every page. We used Kwaku’s design everywhere, boldly in the page headers and in delicate ways elsewhere, such as the subtle trims and textures meaning that even areas of flat colour had edges and considered finishes.

What started life as the bare frameworks of each page as we planned the content and user experience gradually built layers to amplify the messaging and frame the portfolio. We gave the patterns life and colour with animation that really adds another dimension to the cloth style of the designs. The movement which we’ve placed throughout the site, both in a decorative and functional way, is intended to draw the eye down each page and sometimes to indicate places to pause by moving sideways.

As we put together the design of the pages, we refined the colour palette and applied the use of Helvetica throughout, using the new digital redrawing, Helvetica Now, launched in 2019 which feels sharper and more cleanly spaced on the web. The idea of these projects is to create a way in which everything holds together without distracting from the central purpose of the website, to provide clear information about MISA. We were thrilled when Lucy explained after we’d finished, “I expected a logo, a palette and a website. What we got is closer to a language.”

How our system travels

Following the completion of the website, our brand rollout gained pace, moving to a second stage of work which applied the design work which began online to a wide-ranging and highly flexible presentation template. What’s interesting here is the way in which a brand system has to function in another, often more static, simpler way, without losing a sense of continuity and pace.

We love it when our work has this kind of flexibility and it’s an approach which Lucy has shepherded from the point where we decided the design concept was really working: “it’s ended up everywhere: our presentation templates, our documents, even internal tools we’re building.” That’s exactly the kind of validation we were hoping for and we’re looking forward to seeing where else we can take the MISA Group brand.

The group principle

Designing a brand system for an investment group is usually assumed to mean imposing order from above. Our work here does things differently, using a ‘group mindset’ and building outward. We’ve embraced Kwaku’s work from the start and defined who MISA is, in a way that feels true to the group. The design has a richness and quality by blending creative elements of the place and colours from across the group.

The interesting thing about MISA Group is that it has such depth of knowledge from their many years of working in Africa, yet this new brand feels fresh and forward-looking, giving the portfolio companies and their team a mirror. As Lucy explains, “People have to be able to go onto the site and understand who we are, what we do and what we believe in, and how, and we had to let the people doing the work on the ground shine through.”

Are you looking for design expertise creating a brand system for an investment group?

We’ve completed work of this kind working with umbrella companies, firms with a diversified structure and firms with many funds which use a brand system to delineate them. Great examples of our work in this field are:

Veld Capital

Baker Steel

KOA

…and of course MISA Group themselves.

More of our work for investment firms

More of our work in the energy sector

Read our full interview with MISA Group’s Lucy McAndrew here

If your group company’s name, visual identity, or digital presence no longer reflects where your business is going, we’d love to talk. Get in touch: 020 7351 4083 or email us directly.