A white book with red text that says "The PassiveHouse Guide to Better Living through Affordable Design, Performance and Energy Efficiency"

Passive House Canada brand identity

Location

Canadian market

How do you make sustainable design principles so commonplace that they become standard practice and are adopted into the building code? How do you help a non-profit organization assume a leadership role in the design and building industry across Canada? A brand strategy, name and visual identity are a good place to start.

Disciplines

Brand standards manual outlining the brand guidelines
A red T-shirt that has two white rectangles on it that say "Build better." and "Feel better." along with the logo.

Our name and brand was surrounded by confusion, lacked clarity and had little emotional connection with key audiences. We chose hcma for their professional background, the capacity of their personnel to understand our market, and an enthusiasm for the challenge presented. Our experience with them throughout was excellent, demonstrating insight, innovative thinking, prompt service and great branding.

Rob Bernhardt, CEO, Passive House Canada

A street hoarding board design with red and white. It contains their logo, slogan.
Design Challenge

Through our relationship developed via Passive House certified architectural projects, we were offered the opportunity to engage our Communications Design team to develop a strategy, name and visual identity that would help erase misconceptions and raise awareness of the Passive House standard in design and construction industry across Canada.

Two banners, one white with their logo in red and one red with their slogan and information.
Client

The Canadian Passive House Institute is a non-profit organization that advocates for the use of the Passive House Standard in construction. They provide members with education, training, tools and access to an expanding network of practitioners so they can deliver low energy buildings with confidence. They sought a new name and identity to support increased public awareness and membership growth.

Passive House business card, which is white with red edges and their red logo.
A tube with a white sticker on it that includes the PHC logo and "ATT:" following an example of someone's name.
A branded white folder and red envelope with bold text on it.
Design Response

Using our in-house brand capabilities, we drew upon our marketplace understanding and professional expertise with the Passive House building standard to embark on a brand audit, marketplace analysis, and research project that resulted in a new brand essence, positioning strategy, and name. As a result, CanPHI West evolved into Passive House Canada.

Our design team created a new identity system, including logo, tagline, and messaging. We also developed brand guidelines with look and feel recommendations for how to apply the new brand to collateral, stationary and a new website. The new Passive House identity system was delivered to the client as a comprehensive brand manual with guidelines and templates for application in print and online.

Multiple pages of the PassiveHouse brand guidlines
Back to Work