New corporate house style reflects ITDS’ identity

DESIGNER WOUTER OVERHAUS:

“The face presented by a company to the outside world must correspond with its soul and DNA.” That was the departure point for designer Wouter Overhaus, who worked with ITDS on the new design, of among other things, this website.

A new logo. A new website. A new corporate house style. To be used on everything from PowerPoint presentations to corporate stationery. During their development, and aided and abetted by colleagues from OVERHAUS design and communication workshop, Wouter sparred with the ITDS management. “As a designer,” he insists, “you can never tread a creative path alone.”

“First of all, we established the essence of ITDS, which can be summarised as no frills and professionalism palpable in every pore. Even on entering the company’s offices you’re impressed and struck by how contemporary it is. But there’s more to designing a logo than just creating an appealing form; it also has to correspond with the character of the company. We therefore opted for a font that communicated the right degree of boldness, combined with understated form. Given a clear wish to feature orange in the new corporate house style, an orange line was drawn beneath ITDS. If you think it’s important to communicate a colour to the outside world you must also use it in your logo. And because four letters with a line drawn beneath them hardly constitute a brand image, we added the TM icon.”

The website has also been given a new look. In addition to carrying the necessary information, more life has been injected into the site through the inclusion of plenty of editorial content, making it more like a magazine. “The images and diversity help in this respect,” explains Wouter. “It clearly makes the purpose of the site, as a business card, quite obvious. We also designed a new identity for the ‘#getready’ campaign, thereby revealing the soul of the company and its perspective on business aspects.”