Studio Dumbar nails the identity for a pretty conservative industrial client

It’s all very well championing identity work for a cool club night or a hipster restaurant, but it’s more interesting to come across really impressive design for, how shall we say, less glamorous clients. And they don’t come much less glamorous than VolkerWessels Boskalis Marine Solutions, or VBMS, which specialises in “subsea power cable installation” (mmm, sexy). So it’s great to see the ever-excellent Studio Dumbar create a new look for the new company which was formed by the coming together of two existing entities.

The Dumbar team wanted to retain and combine the previous companies’ “hard-earned equity” but create something that felt fresh and future-facing and it looks like they’ve succeeded in style. The simple device of the wordmark’s “M” dipping below the baseline is a communicative nod to VBMS’ core business and the black and muted silver colour palette feels solid and restrained. Perhaps the best measure of this identity is its ability to work across not just print and digital but shipping containers and coffee cups, a pretty versatile range of applications.