Building the Landing Aquaculture brand - Changing the game for a new generation of land-based fish farming.
How a small team of fish farming engineers came to matter in a landscape dominated by corporate giants.
Background
Landing Aquaculture is an engineering and consultancy company focussed on landbased intensive fish-farming, developed from mainly aquacultural engineers to technical experts and consultants, which concentrates on the creative part of engineering. Landing designs fish farms, manage expectations and perform feasibility studies. They are the innovators, inventors, the translators between development and implementing.
Rob and Carlos, the managing directors of Landing, asked us to help them develop a brand strategy and identity that would reflect their innovative approach towards the industry as well as their playful attitude in life. Positioning their brand to matter in the fish farming culture. They were aiming to be the change that the industry so desperately needs, but were lacking the voice and language that would help them stand out between the big companies dominating the industry.
Story
With big companies and sales driven “cowboys” dominating the landscape, the reputation of the fish farming industry has taken a hit. Pollution, antibiotics, and animal cruelty are changing the scenery. Big projects are failing, and investors are becoming more cautious. The industry needs to regain its reliability.
Landing wants to prove they can make a difference by transparency in engineering and by doing things properly. By taking full responsibility for their actions without cutting corners, they plan to reestablish trust in the fish farming sector.
David and Goliath
To get Landing’s voice heard in a billion-dollar industry, we developed a brand strategy that focussed around agility, smarts, and transparency. Instead of going head-to-head with well-funded engineering companies, we positioned the Landing brand to complement the work of these giants. Claiming their place in the aquaculture landscape as creative engineers who solve problems before they appear. Highly innovative, fast, and with minimal risk.
Understanding where Landing’s voice would resonate with its target audience meant understanding their audience first. Together with Landing’s team, we distilled ideal client personas from a combination of their current and their desired target groups. The personas provided a deeper understanding of the problems Landing solve for their clients and the gap they bridge between life science researchers, senior investors, and fish farmers.
Brand identity
At Landing Aquaculture, everything we do is for the greater good of the fish farming culture. We’re the creative game-changers in a business with a bad reputation. We are curious engineers who do things differently. We are a friendly, somewhat geeky brand that wants to do things properly. We come across as serious, reliable, and knowledgeable. We are fun to work with, and we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
Visual identity
We designed Landing’s visual identity to reflect their expertise in engineering, their quest to rebuild trust in the industry, and their never-ending curiosity.
The fan-shaped symbol represents a fish scale.
It symbolizes knowledge, reliability, and the system.
Knowledge – As a fish gets older, its scales get wider and grow exponentially.
Reliability – Scales protect the fish. Fish rely deeply on them.
System – The scale is a building block. When organized the right way, they form a working system. If one scale misses, the whole system fails.
The shape of the wordmark represents the pipes used in the systems and prototypes that guide the flow of water and bring Landing’s engineering to life.
Webdesign
To extend Landing’s brand positioning and voice, we’ve created an online presence that inspires exploration of the brand. Designing the UX to flow naturally from inspiring values, through knowledge and expertise towards products and action.
Combining transparent values, authentic stories, vivid imaging, and a personal approach to inspire Landing’s audience.
Content direction
To ensure consistency through Landing’s visual communication, we developed a content guide to inspire them with best practices, examples for tone-of-voice, interaction, and look & feel.
