Bersella Advisors
Brand Identity
Client: Bauer Reuvers and Associates
The Bersella Advisors brand identity was built from first principles - a complete reimagining of a 35-year-old South African wealth management firm stepping into its next era. The project encompassed logo design, a comprehensive brand guidelines document, and a suite of digital and print assets, establishing a visual identity that stands apart from the blue-navy-gold sea of competitors and speaks to both legacy clients and a new generation of high-income earners.
Role
Brand strategy & discovery Logo development
Brand guidelines
Digital asset production (letterhead, OG image)
Graphic Designer
Year
2026
The Goal
The central challenge was a dual audience: reassuring 120+ established client families while attracting a new cohort of design-literate, tech-comfortable professionals. The brief called for a visual identity that communicates trust, clarity, and modernity simultaneously - premium without being cold, distinctive without being loud. Above all, the brand had to stop someone mid-scroll and make them think: I've never seen a financial advisor that looks like this.
Process
The project began with an in-depth discovery phase, working through a detailed brand questionnaire that mapped the firm's positioning, competitive landscape, and personality. Competitor analysis revealed a market dominated by generic blue palettes and stock imagery, which became the creative foil - the thing to actively design against. Colour exploration started from scratch, ultimately arriving at a palette led by a vivid electric blue against a near-white warm ground, with Acid Green as a sharp accent. Italian Plate No2 Expanded by Playtype was selected as the brand typeface - modern, expanded, and confident without borrowing from any financial services cliché. The logo system was developed across multiple colourways and configurations to work seamlessly from favicon to billboard, and from a client PDF to an animated website hero.
Final Design
The delivered brand system includes a primary logo and wordmark, a complete colour palette with usage rules, typography guidelines, and a suite of production-ready assets: letterhead in two regulatory variants, an Open Graph image for the firm's website launch, and a full logo package in SVG, PNG, and JPG across light, dark, and monochrome colourways. The identity positions Bersella Advisors as what it is — a design-led, technology-forward firm that happens to have 35 years of financial wisdom behind it.
