Brand & identity

Brands built from
a blank page, and kept
consistent at volume.

I have been designing brands for longer than I have been designing products. I have built identities from naming upward, co-led a company rebrand and owned the rollout across every touchpoint, and run the marketing design for a consumer product shipping every week. The last five years added something less common: a design system that carries a brand into a live product, then re-themes it for eleven client brands without losing either one.

Madrid, open to remote across Europe pratesbernardo@gmail.com LinkedIn CV (PDF)
12
Years designing brands
3
Companies as the only designer
11
Client brands themed on one system
4
Countries the work was made in

Brand work

Three companies, three scopes
The FanTeam brand key visual, the wordmark over a stadium
Brand system · Consumer product

FanTeam brand

The brand was little more than a logo. I built it into a system: campaign identities per sport, the marketing design, the ad formats the team ships in every week, and a landing page redesigned end to end. It became the visual standard the company works from.

1 logo
To a full brand system
12+
Ad and campaign formats
View case study →
The MyCujoo mark applied on two football jerseys
Rebrand · Sole in-house designer

MyCujoo rebrand

I co-led the rebrand of a football streaming platform and then owned the rollout alone, across social, matchday graphics, print, and events. Landing a new identity is one job. Making it stick everywhere, with one designer, is the harder one.

Sole
In-house designer
Acquired
By Eleven Sports
View case study →
A Footstock Team of the Week graphic in the 2.0 identity
Brand · Startup, only designer

Footstock

The only designer at a fantasy trading startup, on a remote team of thirteen. I built the brand from its first guidelines, fed it daily output across every format the company needed, and then sharpened the whole identity for the 2.0 relaunch.

1k → 2k
Members over the relaunch
13
Person remote team
View case study →

How I work in brand

Identity as a system, not a logo

A mark is the easy part. What makes a brand hold up is everything around it: the rules, the type, the formats, and the decisions someone else can follow when I am not in the room.

Naming, when that is where it starts

Alvvor and NovaLab began with a blank page and no name at all. I am comfortable that far upstream, working with founders before there is anything to design.

Brand that survives contact with the product

I build design systems in code, so I know what a brand decision costs to implement. That tends to make the brand better, not smaller.

Volume without drift

Being the only designer at a startup teaches you to keep an identity consistent when there is no time and no second pair of eyes. It is a different skill from launching one.

More brands, built from scratch

A small selection

Earlier identities for small businesses and founders, from the years I ran my own studio. Several of them started at naming, before there was anything to design.

Benevie brand mark
Benevie
Alvvor brand mark
Alvvor
Rent Bela brand mark
Rent Bela
Ground Control brand mark
Ground Control
Boca Roxa brand mark
Boca Roxa
NovaLab brand mark
NovaLab
Willian Pinho brand mark
Willian Pinho