Nesea Rebranding: Turning an Innovation Consultancy's Values into Space, Print and Movement

Most rebrands stop at the logo. The Nesea Rebranding treats the logo as the smallest part of the problem. Its real argument is that a company selling innovation cannot simply say it is innovative; it has to be seen working that way. So the identity moves off the page and into the office, onto the walls, through glass doors and along circulation paths, until the brand becomes something employees walk through every morning and clients read before anyone has spoken a word.

Developed by Tiziano Mario Castelli, Sublimio Branding & Strategy, Valeria Marucci and Matteo Modica, the project was shortlisted for the Brilliant Brand Awards 2019. The client, Nesea, is a young innovation consulting firm that works with major companies and institutions. It grew quickly in scale, expertise and influence, but its identity did not keep up. The values it relies on, listening, experimentation, collaboration and continuous learning, stayed largely invisible to anyone outside the team. The brief therefore called for more than a visual refresh: it called for a spatial narrative.

An Identity Held in People's Hands

The opening image says more about the strategy than any diagram could. Five colleagues stand in front of a pale nautical chart wall, each holding a pink lowercase letter. The brand appears here as something the team physically carries and assembles, not as a mark handed down from above. That fits a consultancy whose method depends on co-creation. The chart behind them introduces a graphic layer of linework and pale ground that runs through the rest of the identity, giving the project a recognisable texture beyond the wordmark.

Chart Linework and Magenta Triangles as a Shared Grammar

The printed collateral shows how disciplined the system is. A folded brochure pairs map linework with blocks of magenta, Nesea's signature colour, set against a diagonal pink backdrop. A single white sheet uses one magenta triangle, the same chart lines and an Italian slogan, and needs nothing else. The business cards split the job cleanly: one side carries a bold wordmark, the other carries contact details, both on a restrained palette.

These pieces matter for the architecture because they set the rules the interiors follow later: a neutral field, sparing colour and text that does real work. Magenta is used as an anchor, never as wallpaper. By the time the identity reaches the office, a visitor has already learned to read it.

An Open Floor Where the Walls Do the Talking

Inside, the office takes the brochure's logic and scales it up to a room. White desks sit on a parquet floor in bright daylight, colleagues pass through as blurred figures, and a slogan runs along the wall. The designers treat typography as an architectural element. Messages about listening, experimentation and people-driven innovation are built into corridors, meeting rooms and transitional spaces, so the places where people pause or pass become moments of alignment with the company's purpose.

The open plan and fluid circulation support the same idea. The blur in the photograph is deliberate: movement is the subject. The layout handles different modes of work, from focused individual tasks to group brainstorming, which makes the office less a fixed container and more a working model of the consulting method it houses.

Glass Thresholds That Keep Everyone in View

The final image moves to the entry: a woman in red trousers pushes through a black-framed glass door in a wood-panelled hall, with a red mat underfoot. It is a small moment, but it carries the project's position on transparency. Glass partitions across the office keep sightlines open between teams and visitors while still allowing acoustic control where it is needed. The threshold works as a filter rather than a wall, and the hint of red at the doorstep repeats the warm accent of the identity at the point where clients first arrive.

Why This Project Matters

The Nesea Rebranding makes a case many firms say they believe but rarely act on: in a service business, the workplace is the product's most honest advertisement. By carrying one restrained visual grammar from business cards to wall graphics to glass partitions, the team turns abstract values into conditions people experience every day. Clients meet the company's ideas through atmosphere and circulation, not slogans alone.

Its strength is restraint. A single colour, a single linework motif and carefully placed text cover the whole system, which leaves room for the people in the photographs to remain the focus. For designers working where branding and interiors meet, this shortlisted entry is a useful reference for letting space carry a strategy rather than decorate it.

View the Full Project

About the Designers

Designers: Tiziano Mario Castelli, Sublimio Branding & Strategy, Valeria Marucci, Matteo Modica

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Project credits: Nesea Rebranding by Tiziano Mario Castelli, Sublimio Branding & Strategy, Valeria Marucci, Matteo Modica Brilliant Brand Awards 2019 (uni.xyz).