Understand
Previse, founded in 2017 (after a few false starts including “Adopt an SME”), aims to “get suppliers paid, instantly”. The brand anchor is a colour, initially a high-visibility yellow, and the headline product quickly became known as “InstantPay”. Meanwhile, all the company’s digital infrastructure sat on the Swedish domain name “previ.se”.
Shortly after, the founders conceived a logo using an executional idea (and the high-viz yellow was swapped for Pantone 108C). This simple and dramatic concept highlights the “is” in Previse with a yellow box. Then it reuses it to highlight meaningful phrases in artwork and presentations.
The idea and brand were fun and innovative, both to see and to work with.
Despite this positive vibe, after nearly two years in the wild, there were some opportunities for improvement.
As a startup, your logo often appears “on screen” alongside many other startups and well-established corporates. This logo seems to recede into the background when seen in these situations, suggesting it needs more presence. There was also a nagging inconsistency: sometimes the icon contains “is”, and sometimes it has just the letter “p”.
With a deadline to get InstantPay Water Bottles commissioned, it was time to set some parameters and crack on with some logo development.