Penthack's Identity
Penthack
Logo design
Branding
A face for Ethical hacking
Penthack's Identity
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Penthack
Design the logo Penthack, and new ethical hacking company focused on providing top tier protection for high end brands.
Created in 2020, Penthack is a newly formed company from Gaia, Portugal, formed by 5 partners, including some of today's most promising hackers. The goal of the project was to design a logo that would represent the company's aggressive approach to cybersecurity. They fell in love with their own name, and that name would have to be clearly represented in a clean, simple logo.
How many fives can you count?
We obviously had 5 partners, but also offered 5 services spread across 3 areas of activity. The name was also thought to be a clear reference to the number 5 (the "pent", besides obviously meaning pen-testing it was also a reference to "penta" - Greek word for 5). There's obviously other brand attributes involved such as security, openness, clarity, freshness, lightness and reliability. All of these have a direct association to what the brand wished to be perceived as. Some of the early explorations involved diamonds and pentagons, and actually included the logo that ended up being chosen.
Quadruple navigation levels
The first time I realised I had a tough job in hands was when I found that not only did we need a third level of navigation, in some cases, we actually needed a "hidden" forth. We can't obviously stack 4 navigation bars at the top, so a couple of alternatives were necessary.
Level 1
Level one of the navigation was a regular good old nav bar at the top of the page. We made clear distinctions between the names of the pages, specially make it clear that regular tasks to upkeep the system were under maintenance, while less visited pages on day to day usage with were under settings.
Level 2
The secondary nav bar came on below and sectioned with distinguishing names, clarifying what each page was for.
Level 3
This is less used across the admin, but in some cases we need a third level to navigate. And example of this was when we needed to clearly distinguish cryptocurrencies like we did on the funding page.
Level 4
Also on the funding page, given the need to make it as clear as possible to avoid mistake while operators fund their hot wallets, we wanted to add a somewhat "hidden" feature, that's not necessary to maintain the system, but it's definitely a "nice to have". This allowed users to dive in more deeply into something related to the page.
Putting all together
Rare were the cases in which we needed to use all 4 levels, but it did happen once or twice. The Funding page was an example of that, allowing users to enter the "hidden" section to see the funding history.
Piercing diamonds
One of the most important points of focus was to create a brand that would fit the higher-end market they were aiming for. Naturally, an easily understandable association with that word is a diamond. It also has a relation with durability or reliability, being the hardest known mineral. The word quickly resonated with the team, to the point they started treating each other as "diamonds". A diamond was designed as an inverted pentagon, but it was peirced, representing the company's strong resources capable of penetating the toughest system, ensuring network security.
Piercing diamonds
One of the most important points of focus was to create a brand that would fit the higher-end market they were aiming for. Naturally, an easily understandable association with that word is a diamond. It also has a relation with durability or reliability, being the hardest known mineral. The word quickly resonated with the team, to the point they started treating each other as "diamonds". A diamond was designed as an inverted pentagon, but it was peirced, representing the company's strong resources capable of penetating the toughest system, ensuring network security.
Piercing diamonds
One of the most important points of focus was to create a brand that would fit the higher-end market they were aiming for. Naturally, an easily understandable association with that word is a diamond. It also has a relation with durability or reliability, being the hardest known mineral. The word quickly resonated with the team, to the point they started treating each other as "diamonds". A diamond was designed as an inverted pentagon, but it was peirced, representing the company's strong resources capable of penetating the toughest system, ensuring network security.
A new way to override settings
A completely new override system that allow users to gradually change their settings as needed, by defining exceptions to the default values set up when installing the system. The new approach is both more complete and more modular, keeping values like commissions much more manageable, specially in larger operations.
The wizards of the Admin
Intuitive step-by-step wizards allow operators to easily enable or edit important settings without the lingering fear of very expensive mistakes.
Modular KYC
We approached Anti Money-Laundering / Know Your Customer requirements by allowing operators to be in full control, while keeping it simple and easy to understand and manage. The modular system enables the creation of fully customisable rules based on multiple dimensions: transaction amounts, volumes, velocity, and consecutive days.
Piercing diamonds
One of the most important points of focus was to create a brand that would fit the higher-end market they were aiming for. Naturally, an easily understandable association with that word is a diamond. It also has a relation with durability or reliability, being the hardest known mineral. The word quickly resonated with the team, to the point they started treating each other as "diamonds". A diamond was designed as an inverted pentagon, but it was peirced, representing the company's strong resources capable of penetating the toughest system, ensuring network security.
Refining the identity
Choosing a typeface ended being one of the most complex parts of the logo design process. After a lot of thought, the partners decided the classic Futura, designed almost a century ago, would perfectly position the brand as new innovative company. The primary colour palette features a blue, black and white. The blue, although predominant on how it's used on the logo, it's meant to be used as an accent colour, on a minimal sheet of white, while black and shades of grey are used as an alternative look to the brand on some of the digital materials.
The requirements were simple and to the point. We mainly focused on getting a basic stationary set of business cards, envelopes and letterhead as print materials. We also explored some other application of the brand, as wallpapers, caps, t-shirts, and social media applications.
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Nuno is a very talented professional, with a high level of visual and interpretive acuity. He has the ability to adapt to different themes, making them more and more his own, giving him the ability to meet the client's expectations.
Ana Castro
Founder & Head of Innovation
Project summary
Penthack identity was a very enriching exercise that appeared in a phase of my life where I don't get to do as many full identity designs as I wished. It was an involved process, where I brought the partners to the discussion on a regular basis, ensuring we were all in the same page throughout the process. The result was a solid but simple and timeless identity, completely fit to enter this new but competitive segment of coporate cybersecurity.
