Branding the Wales StartUp Awards

Having worked with Liz Brookes and Dylan Jones-Evans on the Cardiff Business Awards we were very excited when they approached us to brand their latest venture, an awards ceremony celebrating the hard work of startups across Wales.

While the Cardiff Business Awards looked prestigious and sleek, the branding for the Wales Startup Awards needed to be exciting and energetic—an award startups would aspire to win.

These new awards recognised passionate entrepreneurs and startups that stood out from the crowd, those with a real spark! With this in mind we developed an energetic and iconic symbol to represent the awards—utilising the A from the type. We customised a heavy Swiss style typeface give the logo a modern look.

We wanted to create a bold visual style that would be just as exciting as the logo. Starting with the spark shape, we introduced a vibrant colour palette filled with bright, overlapping graphic shapes, dots and stripes to create a rich visual texture.

We supported the awards with the design of a set of unique trophies—one for each award, background stage graphics and the awards programme. Photography by Matthew Horwood.

With a strong visual style in place we designed and built a bright and energetic website for the awards using our CMS of choice, Craft. We kept the site design clean and minimal and let the bright textures speak for themselves.

The awards took place at the awesome Depot on Friday 16th September, and it was brilliant. Full of energy and fun—the brand we'd created fitted right in.

Here's what founder Liz Brookes had to say...

"Toward created a stunningly bold design concept for the Wales StartUp Awards that flowed throughout the event, from the fabulous website to the individual trophies. Not only do they create fabulous unique designs but the enthusiasm and involvement from the whole team makes working with Toward a complete joy!"

We're looking forward to supporting the team next year as sponsors once again!