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.

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

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.

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. The Fortis logo is big and confident, placed at the bottom of applications. Despite of the large scale, the logo still feels pared back, not taking away from the content.

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

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

“We consider you all more like friends, rather than business acquaintances.”
Steve & Leonie, The Benson residents

"You have managed to pull at the heartstrings of this community.”
Tony Fialides, President of the Toorak Village Traders Association

"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 launch of the new brand has proven unimaginably successful, and, from it, we’ve learned people pay far more attention when you quietly listen.