KVA Leadership is a consultancy that provides coaching to innovative business leaders. Over a career spanning 22 years, CEO and Founder Katia Verresen has inspired and empowered executives from companies such as Airbnb, Figma, Meta, Spotify, The New York Times and many others. Her distinctive methods have earned her the endearing title of the ‘Fairy Godmother of Silicon Valley’.
Katia approached Pentagram to create a new identity for KVA Leadership that would help it attract a wider group of future leaders and connect with executives wanting to invest in growth, while at the same time nurturing a community around the business. It was important that the identity expressed Katia’s unique vision and ambition and elevated her offer, while feeling human and authentic.
Pentagram translated KVA’s essence into a powerful brand and visual system that would appear online and across socials, Katia’s podcast, and Year in Review video, as well as slides, tools and icons.
As well as giving KVA’s offer a much clearer structure, the new brand identity conveys Katia’s unique approach to coaching. The new identity aims to help KVA keep attracting business leaders transforming industries and who are operating at the top of their game. Instead of just tweaking people’s behaviour Katia, encourages a complete change of mindset—the new brand identity is designed to help KVA stand out from more conventional coaching methods which often give little results.
Katia draws upon her significant training and experience in neuro-linguistics and technology to incorporate techniques into programs and meet the unique needs of each individual. She believes that people can grow their inner power as a tool to achieve extraordinary results, creating transformation through an abundance of imagination and joy.
Using coding and motion graphics, this concept is embodied in the living KVA logo created by the Pentagram team. It is inspired by the explosion of creative energy that happens when we grow our inner power.
The new colour palette mirrors a spectrum of moods and temperatures, capturing the diverse range of emotions that can occur during the coaching process, from inspiration and energy, to clarity and empowerment.
The visual style expresses the empowering results of Katia’s approach and includes joyful photography featuring light leaks, sun flares, and rainbow prisms.
Pentagram also designed a series of icons to be incorporated into KVA’s tools and interfaces. These are playful and simple, characterised by lines of equal thickness, round corners, a geometric structure and subtle black-filled elements, and are all designed to sit well with the supporting typeface, Raptor V3 from Superior Type Foundry.
This project took on a profound personal importance for Katia, she sees the brand clearly envisioning the explosion of joy and transformative power that her work can create.
