Silver Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design · 2025
What Next Brand Identity
- A' Design Award 2025 Silver Winner in Graphics, Illustration and Visual Communication Design
- Awarded April 15, 2025
- CLIENT: Zero Bureau
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 82,820
- Verification code 3F7B160337 · Verify this award
About What Next Brand Identity
Final visual outcome is reached by taking a symbol and turning it into a question mark by placing it on a smaller square below (an extracted 1/4 piece of a big square above it) and putting it on a tipping point while remaining in balance, creating a visual sensation of tension with a minimal rearrangement of elements. What Next logo, as well as the name, are in a way an oxymoron, a question and an answer both at once, creating friction. On its own, logo-sign is a simple, deliberate imperfection and a straight-forward communication vessel, striving to create a lot with little effort invested.
Marko Stanojevic's What Next Brand Identity presents a compelling study in typographic restraint and conceptual clarity, positioning itself within the enduring lineage of modernist graphic design while addressing contemporary demands for immediate visual recognition and semantic resonance. The work demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how letterform selection, spatial arrangement, and symbolic augmentation can coalesce into a unified communicative system capable of conveying both denotative information and connotative brand values. The designer's choice of a bold condensed sans-serif typeface suggests confidence and directness, its substantial stroke weight commanding attention while maintaining the geometric purity associated with rational design methodologies. Particularly noteworthy is the integration of the arrow elements, which function simultaneously as abstract geometric punctuation and semantic reinforcement of the forward-looking interrogative embedded in the brand name. The larger arrow's hybrid construction, merging triangular directional symbolism with rectangular stability, creates a distinctive mark that could function independently as a brand symbol while remaining visually integrated with the typographic whole. The compositional strategy of photographing the identity against angled paper introduces an element of dimensional reality that contextualizes the mark within physical application scenarios, demonstrating how the design maintains its integrity across material substrates. The restrained palette of black against white represents the ultimate reduction of chromatic complexity to essential contrast, ensuring maximum versatility across diverse application contexts while communicating the clarity of purpose central to effective brand communication. One might observe how the subtle shadow and paper curl humanize the otherwise austere geometric presentation, suggesting that precision and approachability need not be mutually exclusive qualities. The work invites contemplation of how visual identity systems balance the competing demands of distinctiveness and universality, and how the most effective marks often achieve memorability through confident simplicity rather than elaborate complexity.
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- Logo takes a symbol > and turns it into a question mark by extracting a piece of a big square and putting it rotated on a tipping point of a remaining smaller square below but remaining in balance, producing a new meaning and creating a visual sensation of tension with a minimal rearrangement of elements.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Technically, it is easily producible, makeable, buildable, applicable across various physical or digital forms.
- Tags
- Logo Design, Branding Design, Visual Identity, Visual Communication, Graphic Design
- Production Technology
- It is built to meet technical requirements, be an appropriate but intriguing metaphor that is easy to decode and have a simple, clever-twist in execution, hopefully making it distinguishable, relatable, and memorable. As importantly, it is to be a fundamental visual asset generator for the brand, convenient and highly triggering for further seamless creation of various branding assets like bespoke stationary, signage, advertising, memento objects, and so on. It is pushing subtly towards art by enabling playful execution across platforms and expanding the initial brand values further.
- Design Challenge
- Breathing life into a business consultancy and giving it an emotional layer.
- Project Duration
- Designed in late 2023.
- Research
- Analysis of peer institutions and companies.
- Inspiration
- What Next logo is in a way an oxymoron. In keeping with the company name, it is a Question and an Answer depending on which point of view is optimal for the given context, which creates friction. On its own, without the type, the logomark is a simple, deliberate imperfection and a straightforward communication vessel for the company it is representing, in a sense striving to create a lot with little effort and action invested.
- Image Credits
- Images designed by Marko Stanojevic, executed/rendered by Marko Stanojevic and Quang Tam.