Index Press: A signal in the noise
One of the world’s pre-eminent venture capital investors, Index, came to us with a challenge: how to create a brand that will deliver valuable insights to founders in a landscape already saturated with content? Together, we launched Index Press.
Manifesting as a series of books and a new resources hub, featuring podcasts, articles, and interactive app, Index Press is built around the notion of being ‘A Signal in the Noise’. This idea that emphasises the practical, cut-through nature of their advice, sourced directly from the people and companies Index know like no others.
The decision to create a brand was taken in order to provide a defined space for the new content, avoiding crowding Index’s core venture comms. The identity has its roots in Index’s well established visual identity, but introduces a contemporary, publishing-inspired, editorial flavour.
With a multi-format approach mandatory for an audience of busy company builders, our identity works from the mobile screen to the printed page, supporting long form content, digital tools, podcasts and everything in between, thanks to a versatile, system-driven set of assets.
The user experience challenge presented by the amount and the variety of the content became central to its solution. Inspired by the Signal in the Noise positioning, nearly all the content is surfaced, with a UI that makes selection and navigation to specific things easy and rewarding, with tagging, indexing and categorisation familiar in both the physical and digital world. The result is an experience where users feel the depth and breadth of the content, but can easily navigate to what they need.
Communicating the meticulousness and detail synonymous with Index’s work was essential. These qualities manifest in every aspect of the brand, with a level of craftsmanship inherent in the illustration, data visualisation and application of the identity across different media.
Thank you
Huge thanks to our Vojtech, Simon, Zheela, Dominic, Lewis and all the team at Index Ventures – and, of course, Sam Kerr for his illustrations.