Project Overview

The new Fortis brand is purposefully quiet. It creates space for conversation, putting a spotlight on the fascinating stories and rich expertise of our customers, consultants and team.

Personal, by definition, is related to the individual. Having ‘a highly personal approach to development’, therefore, became the mantra of our intention: to always think about specific people, their lives, needs, wants and fears.

Asking questions, listening closely and then using the answers to inform the way we designed our products, services and communications.

Organisation

Fortis

 

Team

Kristina Granberg - Head of Marketing
Graziela Machado - Design Director
George Hatton - Designer
Liz Keene - Content Marketing Manager & Photographer
Jess Garcia - Marketing & Relationship Manager
Corey London - Printer, Special T Print

Project Brief

The Fortis portfolio piece was designed to demonstrate everything our new brand represented - that we are relationship built, detail driven, and community inspired.

The hardcover book would be used as part of our staff induction, new partner introductions, and as a sales tool for project campaigns. We aligned all future project brochures to be the same size as this book, so that potential customers could receive both as a pair - a brochure that talks to a project, and this Fortis book to show the people behind the project.

Project Innovation/Need

In a market that is loud, we chose to be quiet.

Our visual identity has no colour, only one font, and minimal use of graphics - the ultimate simplicity. We are present, yet quiet - with a generous use of white space grounded by subtle Fortis presence.

Colour comes through our content, where centre stage is given to the stories of our customers, partners and people. Stories are shared through authentic, human-centred photography.

The considered, methodical structure of our development process is represented visually through a strong grid, considered layouts, and technical diagrams using clean linework.

Behind the scenes, content focusses on the process that leads us to the end product, rather than just the products themselves. We reveal our decision-making process, from site selection to engineering innovations, building trust through transparency.

Design Challenge

In recent years there has been an ever-widening chasm between customer and developer, trust and truth. Fortunately, at Fortis we had major advantage as we were still a relatively new brand, only founded in 2016. This provided a strategic opportunity to prove we were truly different from the stereotypical developer ‘establishment’.

Instead of shouting to the world about how unique we were, we chose to demonstrate it. How? Simply by including our customers in the conversation, as we embarked on an entirely new brand direction for the business.

Effectiveness

"The strength and track record of the Fortis brand was integral to the project’s campaign strategy. We took advantage of the Fortis book to highlight Fortis as a brand the buyers could take confidence in."
Ben Stewart, CBRE

"The Fortis book works as hard – if not harder – than our campaign collateral in selling in a project to prospective customers."
Di Wilson, Ray White Double Bay

“Your brand speaks volumes for how you approach business and life.”
Rotem Rotenberg, Cobild building partners

The Fortis book has been so successful, we've had to a do a number of reprints to keep up with demand.