Case study 03
Garden State Venture Partners
- Brand strategy
- Brand voice and messaging
- Creative direction
- Information architecture
University affiliated venture funds all look the same, and there is a reason: nobody wants to be the one that trades credibility for personality.
Visit the siteContext
A new fund, one hundred percent focused on New Jersey, managing a $25M university foundation allocation. Brand ready in two months.
The brief ran thirteen pages, which is a good sign and also a warning. The university affiliation carried compliance requirements that cannot be improvised, and the first workshop with the three managing partners made clear that the obvious was not obvious at all. We moved the timeline rather than lower the standard.
There was a second problem underneath the first. New Jersey competes with California, New York and Miami for the same companies and the same talent, so the brand had to make the case for the state as much as for the fund.
What I did
I ran the discovery. In depth interviews and strategy workshops with the three managing partners, plus market research and category analysis, all of it feeding a brand book that had to hold before anything visual was allowed to begin.
The category reads austere, structured and safe. My argument was that GSVP could break with that without spending a single point of the trust an investor needs to feel. The partners are world class experts with the credentials to match, so credibility was never the variable. Distinctiveness was.
I defined the verbal identity and the core messaging: tone of voice, storytelling guidelines, positioning, one liners and blurbs. I directed the creative team on copy and design across the deck, the one pager and the site, and I organised the site map and information architecture so the website followed the narrative instead of working against it.
Results
In scope
A brand built from zero, inside a compliance regime that does not forgive improvisation.
Strategy, verbal and visual identity, deck, one pager and website, in one condensed timeline.
In meaning
A fund that reads like New Jersey, not like every other fund.
Bold colour, an intersection mark and photography of the state, in a category that defaults to grey.
In trust
The client called before there was a brief.
Shawn had worked with this team before. When he launched a new fund, the first call was to us, not to a pitch process.
Funka helped us find our brand voice. We knew what we were building but we needed a professional firm to express it. They took the time to understand the heart of what we were doing and turned it into something that felt true, fresh, and bold. The look, tone, and clarity all came together under their guidance.
Delivered
- Market research
- Brand strategy
- Brand book
- Verbal identity
- Visual identity
- Pitch deck
- One pager
- Information architecture
- Website
Seeding Success.
The brand's tagline, live today
