Brahm A. Elkin
Founder / President of the M&A Club
Pastel portrait by Josh Elkin
How to create for a serial entrepreneur.
It can be challenging creating for a serial entrepreneur. Things get especially interesting when that client is your father.
When Brahm turned to me in 2009 for a logo, brand identity and voice to represent his M&A Club, I had no idea how involved I would become. At the time I was living in the East Village of New York designing touchscreen interfaces for the Bloomberg Forum, a conference for the world’s economic leaders. So a perfect fit for the mental space I was already in.
The M&A brand mark, like Bloomberg’s, needs to feel timeless, immutable and as substantial as the players involved.
Focused on the needs of the people, the resulting brand mark and identity carries gravitas and is sculpted from fusing two characters together with the negative space from the ampersand. The two separate characters come together with a discreet and transparent connection, an analogy for the role of the Club: bringing people together.
Iconic, memorable and unmistakable, the modular logo is also easy to reproduce and works in both French and English.
Part time pro-bono creative, brand and strategy consultation and leadership since 2010.
-
1- Create a brand mark that represents, appeals to, and passes the scrutiny of a VIP crowd of bankers, lawyers, arbitrators and private equity managers as well as private business owners.
2- Must be easily identified in both English and French markets of Canada.
3- Will be used in a number of various event, print and digital mediums.
4- Must account for expansion as the Club expands across Canada.
-
The solution is a timeless, easily identifiable brand mark that is:
sculptural, bold and immovable- reliably solid and iconic.
Easily reproduced in either print or digital.
Easily translated to French.
Modular to allow for timely new variations.
-
I created the brand identity and logo with style guides for the internal team to use when building out digital and print collateral. Accompanying the visual material is a copy deck and manifesto where I paint the picture of the brand including references to 007 and black tie, triple black Porsche, classy not sassy or flashy, but sophisticated and educated.
The M&A website.
We worked on the website strategy, exploring different avenues for a year before landing at this place, a website as neutral, tasteful and practical as the brand mark and the people it represents.
Mobile first with short and crisp messaging, limited color palette and mood setting images, the website is an acquisition and messaging tool. The design is modular so that the hero area can be populated with current events and calls to action without loosing the original flavor of the message, which is the value proposition of the Club:
Buy. Sell. List.
Connect.
Close.
On the horizon is expansion into the US market beginning with New York and the first step has been to create an informational landing page to describe the expansion.
