Promoting institutional communication through naming and visual identity.
- Branding
Biscaytik, a foundation promoted by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, whose objective is to modernize the city councils of the territory through the use of ICTs, proposes a project aimed at providing clarity and making its wide range of tools more recognizable for people who work in the administration . A challenge to which we respond with the creation of a renewed global identity system, both visually and in terms of naming.
Biscaytik offers dozens of technological services to the municipalities and inhabitants of Bizkaia. Such a number of applications required a rebranding to facilitate their correct identification and avoid any possible confusion.
To move into the future, we must embrace our past
According to the writer with an international profile, Kirmen Uribe, the calling card of Basques abroad is that of “an ancestral country that loves the avant-garde”. It is from this premise, which combines old and current references, that we respond to the challenge posed by our client.
The architectural complex of the Foundation's headquarters located in Getxo reinforces this idea through the old building (the renovated Bake Eder Palace) and a new one built in glass and steel; both connected by a walkway, a symbol of the link between past and present. An impossible track to avoid that leads us naturally to the proposed branding solution.
Naming the unknown and bringing it closer to people
Interoperability, General Electronic Registry, Single Definitive File or Municipal Open Data, are some of the terms handled by Biscaytik in its day to day. These are words with which most people are little or not at all familiar; complex and not very suggestive names, difficult to assimilate.
Likewise, as there are a large number of different tools, the need to create a connection between them is detected, although avoiding starting from a similar construction that could produce even more confusion. As a solution, we start from the idea of using different syntactic construction models such as descriptive construction or neologisms; as well as abstract, suggestive, evocative or associative terms.
Naming as a vehicle for telling stories
One of the key characteristics of the naming proposed for the tools offered by Biscaytik has to do with the language. After all, the Foundation's objective is to facilitate the digital management of the people of Bizkaia and, if there is something that unites a society, it is undoubtedly the language that it speaks. In addition, bearing in mind that Biscaytik also works to promote and promote Basque, the name of each tool must always have this language as a priority.
In this way, the decision is made to start from Basque when tackling the naming creation process for the Foundation's different tools. As we detailed in the article Naming, what's in a name, “naming must be a vehicle for stories, seeking to be both morphologically, visually and auditorily attractive, generating memorability and relevance for audiences.“ Thus, through a formula that starts from the descriptive, etymological, patronymic and toponymic; being able to entail a construction with two or more words as well as a contraction or an acronym, we arrive at the final list of the 23 tools.
In the towns of Bizkaia it is common to find access to the interior of the town hall through an arkupe or arcade. The concept makes direct reference to examples of buildings such as Gernika, Zornotza, Durango, Mundaka, Zeberio, Mungia, etc. It is desired to transfer this concept to the digital world.
The use of Basque when naming the tools brings them closer to the society they are aimed at and fulfills Biscaytik's commitment to promoting the language.
A perfectly variable and adaptable conceptual visual identity
The creative concept of naming is also transferred to its visual identity, for which a totally flexible identity system is proposed, capable of reflecting the purpose of each tool. Returning to the architecture of the Foundation's headquarters, we look at the plans of the buildings. From them we extract certain representative geometric elements (the arch of a window, for example), giving rise to the different compositions that make up the visual identity of each of the tools that, in a simplified and conceptual way, tell us about their function, reinforcing thus the choice of the naming of each one of them.
The categorization and the relationship of the tools by families, is worked through the use of color. The creative concept that unites the ancient and the contemporary is transferred once again through the use of material, using the uniform mass of color, tangible and solid, to evoke the past and a more crystalline or translucent material, which reflects the current. Thus, through the superposition of both resources, the union that we can appreciate in the plane is glimpsed, reinforcing that connection, that union.