Trevor Gessay
Creative Direction & Design
LA / CD
Los Angeles, California
Trevor Gessay
Creative Direction & Design
LA / CD
Los Angeles, California
CSA Group is a standards association that works across multiple industries to ensure higher standards for workers and consumers. Working to create safer and more efficient products.
The Office of Experience
Senior Designer
Some logos don’t need to be completely reworked. Rather than reinventing the wheel and losing all of the brand equity the CSA Group mark has built over the past 100+ years, we decided to strip away the extraneous elements of the previous iteration. Aligning the mark closer to its roots to continue the legacy of the logo. Making the mark seen on products aligned with the company’s thumbprint.
The blue hue was selected to represent credibility and trust, pulling reference from highly regulated industries such as finance and healthcare. To complement the blue, we introduced an orange hue that would also represent the standards side of the business.
Because of the type of work CSA Group produces, we decided to take a step back with an editorial approach to the imagery. Focusing on four main categories: objects, people, environments, and textures. To differentiate the photography style from other editorial work, we isolated the blue and orange tones in the imagery to create a distinct look that aligns with CSA Group’s refined usage of color.
Building off of the momentum from the updated logo, we created a set of icons to represent each product area CSA Group supports. Further extending the logo’s equity into different elements of the brand.
CSA Group’s vast network of engineers author standards, white papers, case studies, and fact sheets. Due to the sheer number of pieces, it was crucial to build a flexible system for each category to create a clear distinction between the pieces.
Once the vision was established, we shifted our focus to the website. The previous version was impossible to navigate. Links redirecting users to the same page with varying nomenclature created a cycle of confusion and an overall bad user experience. Our job was to start a massive overhaul in reorganizing the website to build a functional experience. Through numerous rounds of testing, we distilled the content into clear, logical categories. Providing an effortless experience, users are now able to quickly find the pertinent information for their specific product.
With the two areas of business working as separate arms, we used blue as the primary color for testing and orange for standards. Allowing each section of the brand to have a distinct, yet familiar look to aid in clarity and functionality.
Due to the complexity of the website and new content continuously being published, we created a design system to help guide CSA Group in future asset creation. Designing groups of components for specific instances, so they could continue to publish standards without the fear of turning their website back into an incoherent mess.
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