Ignia
Ignia and I go way back. We teamed up to work on projects for Microsoft in the 90s, I created their identity, and I even named the company. Years later, I joined the company to head up their design department where I worked on more Microsoft projects, and further developed the Ignia brand.
Before going to work at the company in 2000, I had developed the company’s initial identity (name, palette and logo mark) in the mid-90s (yes, I don’t quite recall the year, but it was definitely the late-mid-90s). It wasn’t until I took over creative responsibilities for the company that I found the right typeface to anchor the bold red mark (Futura Condensed).
To be sure, it is a simple mark, and one of the first I’d designed (as a fledgling creative). But its simplicity has helped it outlast the dot-com era environment that had me and several other designers producing identities very similar to this, most of which are now dead and buried.
The last project I worked on for Ignia was the redesign of their website.
The brand direction I’d set the company on when I joined in 2000, when the dot-com boom was still in full swing, was full of a great deal more derring-do.