We were asked to create a new name and identity for a real estate company to mark its entry into the development sector. The ‘Avanton’ name was created to express its positioning as being more forward-thinking than the norm in the sector. The use of a full colon in the visual identity reinforced this idea of looking ahead at what is to come.
How do you create a distinctive identity for a brand new entrant in the already crowded residential development sector? One that expresses the forward-thinking nature of the company yet avoids anything too fashionable or superficial.
We responded to this brief by running brand workshops with the client team and their advisors to help develop a compelling and vivid vision for the company brand. It was clear that a wholly new name would be needed to express the ambition of the company.
Through an iterative process, the name ‘Avanton’ was recommended. The word brings together two meanings: the ‘avant’ deriving from old French meaning ‘before’ or ‘forward’, and the ‘ton’ suffix that stems from the old Anglo Saxon word for ‘settlement’. Put the two together and you have a brand new word that encapsulates the company’s ethos – creating imaginative forward thinking places to live (plus availability of the URL, which is often extremely difficult to obtain).
The meaning of the Avanton name has been further expressed in the visual identity by the use of the colon at the end of the wordmark – the grammatical mark indicating that something is to come.
The new brand has been rolled out across all applications from the company’s office interiors, stationery, new website and the company’s individual schemes, the first of which is Coda, a new residential scheme incorporating the new base for the Royal Academy of Dance.
