Invaluable Brand Update
Intersection of the Art World
As the world’s leading online marketplace for fine art, antiques and collectibles, Invaluable sits at the intersection of the art world — steeped in centuries of tradition and cultural heritage — and cutting-edge, 21st-century technology. Their brand voice and visuals reflect this juxtaposition by offering a clean and modern aesthetic imbued with a nod to the tradition and heritage laid in the foundation of the art market.
Aspects of this brand were worked through to ensure that everything would come together to smoothly reflect this and navigate how brand assets come together to form the identity.
Tone of Voice
After working with a third party on analyzing the consumer’s archetype, users were assessed to be determined, possess weighted emotions, and be influenced by their environment leading to the brand personality being approachable, passionate, and intelligent to match. This information was greatly utilized as thoughts around the tone of voice that our copy takes were never formalized.
Pages from the brand guide describing tone of voice with examples specific to the auction industry.
Brand Architecture
With additional products being added and more on the way, there was much confusion about the Invaluable and AuctionZip (Invaluable’s sister brand) product suite and their relationship to each other. This caused inconsistencies when talking to users and potential clients and led to a greater focus on one brand, leaving the other to consistently fall behind in support.
Free-Standing: Our Old Approach
After talking to multiple employees, this seemed like the general idea of how individuals viewed the company though most did not know of the parent company’s existence or name.
After talking to multiple employees, this seemed like the general idea of how individuals viewed the company though most did not know of the parent company’s existence or name.
A product structure was needed to clarify how the two brands and multiple products within them relate, and prepare for additional products without losing focus on the main brands. The main goals of this restructuring were to create a cohesive, intuitive, easily visualized ecosystem of products, improve the infrastructure of our services and how we communicate their value externally, and build brand equity.
Monolithic: Our New Approach
Since we need our users to still heavily identify our products with either Invaluable or AuctionZip, this approach gives us the most emphasis back onto the parent brand and help establish brand loyalty and trust. With that our consumers will be more likely to try a new product under the main brand since it capitalizes on the halo effect of the parent brand. While still looking out for any dilution of the main brand’s power and identity.
Since we need our users to still heavily identify our products with either Invaluable or AuctionZip, this approach gives us the most emphasis back onto the parent brand and help establish brand loyalty and trust. With that our consumers will be more likely to try a new product under the main brand since it capitalizes on the halo effect of the parent brand. While still looking out for any dilution of the main brand’s power and identity.
Product Logo Suite
The new monolithic brand architecture model gave a clear direction of prominently displaying the parent brand so the sub-brands can benefit from the connection. To ensure a distinct identity for the sub-brand, a secondary font was employed at a smaller scale. This approach ensures visibility of the brand relation across various color states.
List of rules can be seen in this presentation.
Examples of the Invaluable White Label and Invaluable Consignments sub-brands at different widths as well as full color vs. knocked out.
Color Palette
Looking at basic color theory, it makes sense that red has been a key color in the Invaluable brand since its creation with its ties to passion (which is a well-known feeling to collectors). Gold and variations of black have been added in to speak to the extravagance and luxury of collecting against a white canvas for items to sit against.
Typography
The typefaces selected are clean, professional fonts that speak to modern and traditional times and present Invaluable as a forward-thinking company while still acknowledging and celebrating the past.
Georgia, a serif typeface with a traditional and elegant look and feel, speaks toward the long-standing history of the auction industry. Georgia should be used in short consecutive phrases to enlist emphasis on the section it is highlighting.
Gotham is a versatile, modern typeface that has a luxury feel when used in its thinner weight. Its geometric shape makes it extremely legible especially when viewed on digital mediums.
The top two sections of a marketing page explaining how to bid on Invaluable.
Imagery
The photos used across the Invaluable site and materials most often fall into one of three categories: the anonymous person to allow the user to put themselves in the anonymous person’s perspective, lifestyle to demonstrate how the objects won may live with the collector and the most-used, single-product image.
Illustrations for the min steps for bidding on Invaluable.
