Logo: Factor Negen

Factor Negen (Factor Nine) is a Dutch firm that assists in the connecting of people with employment opportunities and provides training services to business and individuals with a specific focus on personal and professional growth within the context of teamwork. The firm’s visual identity and stationery solution, based around a logo-mark that unites stencil cut detail with the accessible qualities of a face, was developed by multidisciplinary design studio Red Thumb.

As a nine the mark is well rendered, it has a nice sense of positive and negative space, an authoritative weight and vertical alignment. Its basic construction, stencil-cut utility and monochromatic colour palette has a elemental functionality that works well to convey a practical/pragmatic approach. This is countered by the friendlier and more humanistic aspect of the face – eyes and nose neatly picked out by shadow – cleverly drawn out of the mark through a change in orientation and die cut detail across the business card. The logo-type shares a similar two-sided nature, fusing the long-standing professionalism of a classic, well-spaced serif with the informality of all-lowercase typesetting.

Although ‘logo-centric’ the project manages to achieve a simple communicative dimensionality – through simple observation and the natural, unforced duality of the typography – that resolves the pragmatic approach to providing and training people for team-based businesses without appearing too playful or superfluous.

Visit the BP&O Logo Gallery for a chronological guide to all the identities reviewed on BP&O.

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Richard Baird Richard is a British freelance designer and writer who specialises in the development of logos, branding and packaging. He has written for Brand New and Design Week, is an editor for The Dieline, has featured in Computer Arts magazine and also runs the resource Design Survival. Follow:     |     Twitter     |     Facebook     |     Portfolio     |     Contact