Clean Tech / Hydrogen Storage
· 2024-2025
Carbon 280
STANDING OUT IN A SEA OF GREEN
Carbon 280 is a Perth technology company in large-scale hydrogen storage. Its product, Hydrilyte, solves one of the hardest problems in the field: hydrogen is volatile and difficult to handle.
Clean energy is a visually crowded field, and often it uses the same greens and blues. A new entrant with a genuinely new technology needed an identity that would not blend into that backdrop. It also needed an identity for Hydrilyte, the product the company now leads with.
The impact of my work
I researched the company's existing positioning. "Good for the planet" held up, so I agreed with the owner to keep it, and built the brand architecture around it: the company position above, and a new product identity for Hydrilyte beneath it.
When the founder questioned whether the word "carbon" still served the company name, I researched alternative naming directions to test it properly. Carbon 280 stayed, researched rather than assumed.
The distinctive move was in the colour. Green and blue are the default of clean energy.
I set them against a dark grey base: green and grey for Carbon 280, blue and grey for Hydrilyte.
The grey ties the company and the product together, while the green and blue read as fresh and deliberate again instead of generic. Most distinctive is the typography for both trademarks. In combination they give a look that stands apart in the category.
The results
As entrepreneurial brand advisor and art director, I designed and implemented both identities, for Carbon 280 company and the Hydrilyte, and produced the pitch decks, exhibition design, style guides, and marketing materials that initially carried them into investor, partner, and event conversations.
The Hydrilyte identity is the face of the company today. The visual approach I set became the foundation the company carries forward in its materials and on its site.
For a founding-stage company, getting this right early means the identity holds as the business grows, rather than being repositioned later at greater cost.
