Incova Investments
Service Category: Consulting / Creative Services
Created Logo for A Financial Startup
In Tier II towns like Rajapalayam where I live, people don’t invest enough time (or effort or cost) in logo creation. They would go to a printer - for letterheads, seal stamps, or business (“visiting”) cards - and a boy or girl there would type out the company’s name in a few different font types. They select one. Voila, the logo is done. (Yes, sometimes it’s more than enough).
Hence, I was in for a surprise when Kabhilan Sockalingam, an engineering graduate, from a nearby town (Sivakasi) approached me to create a logo “in a professional way”. He was setting up a firm that offers wealth management services (the business of recommending mutual funds and stocks to clients or investing in these financial products on their behalf).
I listened
First, I explained the logo creation process to Kabhilan. We met a couple of times in person in my office. We had a few telephonic conversations and mail exchanges. The purpose of the discussions was for me to learn about the core values and product/service differentiators of his startup - and to determine the ideas Kabhilan wanted to communicate.
Kabhilan planned to position his firm as a consulting firm. He would educate his customers, most of who may not know much about how Mutual Funds work or how to pick a stock in order to achieve their cherished financial goals. It was clear that the key differentiators were investor education and investing guidance.
The stock photo
There is this expert, and a novice investor. Maybe the logo could depict them or the two entities could be the inspiration for the logo. I sent Kabhilan a stock photo of a father and a son jumping together with joy.
My idea was to relate the fatherly figure and the boy to an expert and a neophyte respectively. The picture showed not just joy but also the trust, and the thrill involved in taking the plunge. Necessarily these were the emotions Kabhilan wanted to create in his business for himself and his customers. Kabhilan liked it.
The initial sketch
We had already decided to call the firm Incova Investments (that’s for another case study). So, there was a scope to use the letter “I” twice in the logo: they would stand, on the one hand, for the first letter of the company name, and on the other hand, for the two principal stakeholders: an expert and a customer. I sent Kabhilan back the same stock photo with two “I”s. We both thought we were closer to the final logo.
The final product
Now the task for me was cut out: I had to show the two “I”s as discreetly as possible. I placed the two “I”s in a Consolas font (we used several other font types) and cropped the top right portion of the letters. The shape looked like a northbound arrow - it denotes growth.
The brand message: “The two elements stand for our customers, and us. We take any decision in the spirit of partnerships, co-creation, and mutual benefits.” What came as a bonus was the white space to represent transparency and integrity (by the way, INCOVA stands for Integrity is our Core Value). My designer, Vinoth Pranav, gave the final touches.
With about 33% of customer inputs, 33% of my ideation, and another 33% of serendipity, the logo of Incova Investments was thus created.
