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Our Brand

The word brand comes from an old English noun meaning “fire, flame”. It originates from Proto-Germanic brandaz, meaning “burning”.

In its original sense, a brand is an identifying mark burned on livestock or criminals with a branding iron. In the contemporary, figurative sense, it describes a type of product or service produced by a particular company under a particular identity.

Humans are accustomed to interacting with other people. They can easily distinguish each other and their identity. Branding is the process of giving such simply recognized identity to companies and institutions.

In everything we do, there is a story. Humans are hardwired for stories. Stories are our brain’s way of making sense of a world chaos.

Architecture and storytelling are deeply interconnected. Good architecture follows the same methods as good storytelling.

It is authentic. When we want to tell or build something, we better really mean it.

It is clear and consistent. This is nicely formulated by the dramatic principle of Chekhov’s gun (named after Russian playwright A. P. Chekhov): “Every element of a story should contribute to the whole, irrelevant elements should be removed”.

It embraces a counterpoint, a conflict that sparks up. Without conflict, a story is boring. Contrast works the same way in architecture, an old, authentic construction stands out best in contrast with new, minimalist structures.

We work hard to make the story the best we can. We want to look back one day and say it was worth it.

We are engineers, architects and planners.
We refuel ideas.

An idea is like a spark. It might fizzle out and be forgotten, but It can ignite other minds and start great change. Our job is to make the spark start burning to the fullest.

Our brand name is Refuel. It is a compound word with the prefix re – “again” and fuel. The noun fuel, “a material for burning,” comes from French foaille “fuel for heating,” from the classical Latin focus “fireplace”.

The base of the word can be used as a noun or a verb – fuel. Refuel is also a verb, and its participle forms can also be used. We embrace contextual use of our brand name and its derived forms in communication, e.g. “refuelling ideas, refuelling brands, (re)fueled with curiosity, (re)fuelled with courage”.

We also use english idioms that have a close relationship to the brand name and its origin e.g.: “to add fuel to the fire/flames”– to cause a situation to become more intense, “to make the sparks fly” – to cause disruption or to do something with great energy and enthusiasm.

We use a simple logotype of our name REFUEL in upper case characters in three row above each other.

The refence logotype height is 30 mm with character size 36 pt.

Font family name: Mirai
Designer: Takaaki Goto, GT&CANARY