Trace One

The Design Challenge
Trace One operates across markets, languages, and touchpoints at the same time. A brand that works in a Paris boardroom has to work equally on an exhibition stand in Chicago, a digital banner, and a Word document sent to a supplier in London. The problem wasn’t the brand itself. It was that different teams were using it differently, and nothing was holding it together. I needed to take what already existed and turn it into something that anyone, anywhere in the organisation, could pick up and use correctly.

The Solution
The Brand Book: I started by understanding the brand elements Trace One already had — the logo, the Kaleidoscope graphic built from the logo’s geometry, the corporate color palette, and five separate solution palettes for Marketplace, E-Sourcing, PLM, QMS, and Insight. My job was to build a system around them. Not to reinvent, but to organise, define, and give each element clear rules so the brand could finally work at the scale the business was operating at.

• The System: Color was given serious strategic structure. The corporate palette for company-level communications, and each product solution color-coded so they could be differentiated at a glance while still living inside the same brand. Typography, icon construction, photography direction, the Kaleidoscope usage rules — everything was documented with enough detail to remove guesswork.
• The Guidelines: The final brand book covered every scenario a designer or internal team would face — logo construction, exclusion zones, misuse rules, tone of voice, and application examples across print, digital, PowerPoint, Word, email, stationery, and exhibitions. The goal was simple: make it impossible to get wrong and easy to get right.

The Final Result
Trace One now has a brand system that holds together at scale. Whether someone is designing a DL leaflet for a trade show or sending an internal report, the brand stays consistent. The elements were always good. They just needed a system built around them.