Positioning
Situation
Artefact91 built the brand system for IIBD, an applied research institute working on data accountability in public decisions. The identity had to do more than mark the work — it had to carry the research framework. The Prism mark, a 2×2 grid, assigns each quadrant permanently to one of the four dimensions that structure the institute's research, so the logomark is a diagram of the method rather than an ornament attached to it.
Decision
To give a young research institute the standing to sit across the table from governments, funders and large institutions — and to make the intellectual framework and the visual system inseparable, so the brand states the method instead of decorating it.
Research brands drift toward one of two failures: academic austerity that reads as unfunded, or consultancy gloss that reads as unserious. The system had to hold four distinct research dimensions as equals without collapsing into a colour-coded chart, and it had to survive being applied by people other than the designers who built it.
Movement
A complete identity: the Prism 2×2 logomark, a four-colour palette mapped dimension by dimension, a single-typeface programme in Inter Tight across display and body, a one-page brand guide, a full asset library including email signatures, and a Framer build. Every IIBD artefact produced since — research briefs, toolkits, the public resource library — is made inside this system rather than alongside it.
