Brilliance Labs

Services

Brand Strategy
Naming
Brand Identity System
Digital Experience

COLLABORATORS

Overview

Brilliance Labs is a non-profit in Portland, OR, that invests in leaders of color who want to see their diverse communities flourish.

A bold mission takes a bold brand. We worked with Brilliance Labs to create a brand that both celebrated color and educated the majority culture about issues of race and business — with the right tone and attitude.

Phase 01

Brand Strategy

Problem

The Brilliance Labs team brought us in to help them launch a non-profit that spoke both to faith and business leaders in Portland, OR. After 2020, the wrong tone for this brand could quickly feel like a protest, or on the other side of the scale; not passionate or bold enough.

The goal for this project was to allow Brilliance Labs to gain early interest from leaders in the city who wanted to pursue new ventures.

SOLUTION

We completed brand discovery, naming, brandbook, and website with the help of numerous outside voices to ensure Brilliance would feel celebratory, inclusive, educational, and motivating.

Phase 02

Brand Building

NAMING

When we sat to work on the name for this non-profit we were aiming at a name that felt celebratory and empowering. As we stared at a wall full of names of other potential options we kept coming back to the word brilliance because of the many meanings it carries.

Brilliance (noun)

Intense brightness of light.
Vividness of color.
Exceptional talent or intelligence.

Brand IDENTITY

Brilliance’s mission statement is: To support neighborhood flourishing through strategic investments into new churches and social enterprises that represent and serve under-resourced and multi-ethnic communities.

The mark combines a flower (flourishing) and a bright light (brilliance) to capture the idea: your brilliance will change the world.

Phase 3

Brand Experiences

Website

With the right tone in place, we needed to create a written voice and copywriting that could bring the brand to life. In order to be effective in communicating with both majority culture and leaders of color, Brilliance was trying to reach, we led the brand’s message with the idea of true brilliance — the vibrancy that happens when all colors on the spectrum are full, seen, and celebrated.

This path would allow Brilliance to position itself as the vehicle of which people of color would find the resources, support, and community to thrive as they start businesses and churches.