Mubien powerfully mark Neara’s structural expansion through comprehensive colour and iconography

Australian infrastructure brand Neara have called upon Santander and California-based design agency Mubien to craft them an ambitious new identity – marking their transition from the previous name, Power Lines Pro, and signifying their expansion into further utility sectors.

Led by a uniquely fluid grid system of figure and form, Mubien optimised negative space to generate consistent, yet equally dynamic, logomarks for each division of Neara’s structure – creating up to 256 individual icons. This concept is supported by the prominent use of TWK Everett as the identity’s hero typeface. “We choose Everett because it’s a contemporary and versatile grotesque typeface that features an organic drawing and a particular digital flavour,” Designer Patricia Orden tells us. “Strong typographic details add high tension while keeping a reading comfort,” she adds, “finding the right balance between a font that is graphic yet fluid,” using the typeface across the brand, including the wordmark, albeit with some modifications.

“We decided to use the initials in lowercase, in this way the wordmark acquires balance and a more friendly and humanistic tone,” Orden explains, discussing the alterations present in the wordmark. “The space between characters was reduced, providing more unity to the shape,” she notes, also modifying the ‘r’ to greater reference the Greek Gamma letterform, and in turn the birthplace of Neara’s founder.

A similar emotionally-driven motive within the identity is the specific use of colour, most notably the prominent use of red as the leading hue. “In colour psychology, red provokes the strongest emotions of any colour,” Orden explains, due to its broad chromatic wavelength, a feature which can be utilised to immediately draw an audience’s attention. “A unique colour has been assigned for each product to differentiate them clearly and provide them with their own personality,” she expands, applying each unique colourway softly, acting somewhat as an accent colour in service of the mother brand. “We created the brand looking at the future of the company and providing them with the tools for future products,” Orden concludes, “with a large colour palette to work with based on any of their future needs.”

Mubien

Neara