Trading Tech Values Posters
Trading Technologies is a brand that’s big on culture. It’s one of the the things that we love most about working with them. After going through a rebrand last year, they asked us to create a gorgeous, custom brand book to introduce the new look and feel to employees worldwide. Obviously, we were more than happy to oblige.
To continue this culture building with their team, Trading Technologies turned their attention to the brand’s core values—four pillars that are super important to how they operate as a company. They really wanted to bring these values to life and endear them to employees in a way that would make a big splash without feeling overly preachy or corporate.
What better way to do that than with a series of four limited-edition, hand-illustrated posters?
Poster Design
Brian Mehta, Trading Technologies’ CMO, decided posters with a timeless, vintage feel to them were the way to go. We agreed 100%, and got right to work researching classic poster designs. Brian also sent us a lot of great inspiration, and together we narrowed it down to four potential directions: psychedelic, noir, punk rock and futuristic, sketching up each one using one of the Trading Technologies values.
Since Trading Technologies is a leader in electronic trading platforms, the futuristic concept struck the perfect chord and was the team’s unanimous favorite. With the theme in the bag, our designers began sketching potential posters. To give each poster more of a “retro-futuristic” theme, we went for a golden age of space exploration look and feel, pairing each value with a bold depiction of classic space-age scenery.
The four Trading Technologies values we worked with are:
- “We are Tech Pioneers and Visionaries”
- “We Take Risks”
- “Our Commitment to Users Goes Beyond Software”
- “We Value Ownership Above All Else”
We were immediately inspired by words like pioneers and beyond. For our first poster, we focused on the aspirations of an individual astronaut, gazing up at the cosmos he is determined to reach.
To capture Trading Technologies’ risk tasking, the second of the posters uses a dramatic juxtaposition of scale. It depicts our astronaut exploring the rings of a Saturn-like planet, a feat that is equal parts smarts and guts.
As a way of communicating Trading Technologies’ commitment to going beyond software, we focused on a shuttle blasting off. The play between the smoke exhaust and typographic treatment gives just the right visual momentum we wanted to achieve.
Our fourth poster communicates the value of ownership with a completely new perspective—by taking a step back to admire our space hero as staking his claim over new planetary territory. We highlight this accomplishment with an intense interplay between the powerful font treatment and the sun setting on the horizon.
Poster Production
Once each of our designs were approved we used Procreate, an awesome professional painting app for the new iPad Pro, to make our final designs. Procreate gave us the ability to draw, shade and color individual components of the artwork freehand before importing into Photoshop and illustrator to lay out and arrange the text.
To help ensure we had the perfect finished product, we worked with our printing partner Jeff Hernandez at Classic Color to help us find the perfect printing medium. With his help, we chose a high-quality inkjet printer that gave us the vivid, rich color saturation of the blues, teals and grey that make up Trading Technologies’ brand colors.
From our staff here at the agency to the team at Trading Technologies, we couldn’t have asked for a better result. Between the designs themselves to the quality of the printed posters, we created a keepsake that strikes a perfect balance of brand messaging and bold design. Trading Technologies has printed dozens of each design to be hung with pride in each of their global offices and, in the ultimate compliment to the project as a whole, CEO Rick Lane now has them framed and hanging in his home.
