Automotive and Auto Components
One geometry for forty years of engineering
How a global components group, fractured by three acquisitions and nine regional identities, became one brand, one system and one voice.
- Industry
- Automotive and Auto Components
- Service
- Identity system
- Scope
- Nine markets on three continents
The challenge
Forty years of precision engineering, presented through nine identities that disagreed with each other.
The group supplies drivetrain and braking components to vehicle makers on three continents. Its engineering reputation was impeccable; its brand was not. Three acquisitions in a decade had left nine regional identities, four logo variants and a sales deck rebuilt by every country team. Procurement directors at global OEMs were meeting what looked like three different suppliers.
The cost was measurable. Tender documents arrived late because each region assembled its own artwork. Distributors printed outdated catalogues. Leadership wanted a single company in the market before the next platform-sourcing cycle opened, which left one quarter to do it.
- Nine regional identities and four competing logo variants
- No shared asset library: every country team rebuilt its own artwork
- A hard deadline set by the next OEM platform-sourcing cycle
The approach
Position first, then geometry, then systems that make consistency the easiest option.
Positioning before pixels
Drawing on Intelliversal’s market intelligence, we interviewed procurement leads at six OEMs and mapped how fourteen competitors described themselves. Every rival claimed quality; none could credibly claim tolerance. We built the position on that word: the supplier whose parts are measured in microns and whose promises are measured the same way.
A single geometric grammar
The new monogram is drawn on a proportional grid derived from the group’s own machining tolerances. The same grid sets the typographic scale, the spacing system and the construction of every icon, so each expression of the brand is derived rather than improvised. It holds its shape on an engine housing, a favicon and a twelve-metre trade-show wall.
Systems, not guidelines
Rather than a PDF that teams would ignore, we shipped production tools: design tokens, a component library, governed templates for tenders, catalogues and presentations, and a rollout playbook for the group’s eleven agencies. A brand-tuned asset pipeline generates market and language variants under human approval, so local teams get speed without breaking the system.
The outcome
One supplier in the room, and a brand that procurement teams now describe in the company’s own words.
The group switched over in all nine markets on a single day. Within sixty days every distributor was working from the new templates, and agency turnaround on campaign artwork fell by more than a third. Tender invitations rose sharply over the following two quarters, and the sales team now opens meetings with the deck instead of apologising for it.
They turned forty years of engineering credibility into a brand that finally looks the part.
Eighteen months on, the system is still governed by the tools rather than by vigilance: new product lines, a joint venture and two acquisitions have joined the brand without a single new logo.