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Emotive went deep with us on who our audience was, and applied every ounce of their creative passion to build a verbal and visual identity that has the chance to be legendary.”

Adam Jacob, CEO / Chairman / Co-Founder, System Initiative

Remodeling Destiny

In System Initiative’s visual identity, ‘System’ is represented by flat, two-dimensional grid space—the baseline framework to build from. ‘Initiative’ is represented by multi-dimensional line-work symbols—the perspective shift required to alter thinking and inspire creativity. Together, these identity elements telegraph a new way forward.

Architects & Builders

The second wave of DevOps, characterized by a gritty, do-it-yourself ethos, is animated by the use of texture throughout the visual identity system. A rich variety of textures helps represent the rough-n-ready spirit of the DevOps community.

Stand Up to Mediocrity

The System Initiative brand expresses precision through clean geometric, grid-inspired graphics that cut through all compositions.

More Making, 
Less Breaking

The DevOps community is brought to life with photography—both curated and contributed by its members. Documentary-style imagery captures authentic, candid moments that amplify practitioners’ core passions.

Experience that Works

Provoke curiosity.

System Initiative has a vision for DevOps that’s radically different from anything that’s come before. Engaging practitioners and provoking curiosity required positing ‘what can be’ in contrast to ‘what is.’ We developed a succinct handle to accomplish this: “Welcome to the Second Wave of DevOps. Are you in?”

Put humans first.

Business success ultimately depends on building a community of DevOps practitioners ready to contribute to System Initiative’s open-source model. We developed an approach to photography that invites users to add imagery from their own lives—allowing the brand to become a mirror for the people who matter most.

Speak their language.

System Initiative is creating solutions that help DevOps practitioners do what they love most: innovating. We activated this emotional driver through language that gets to the heart of everyday experience: “Less solo time spent fixing bugs means more time for collaborating and innovating (your specialty).”

A new dimension.

System Initiative’s new DevOps model is visual—transforming what was once defined by lines of code into an easy-to-see, easy-to-use graphical interface. To help tell the brand story, we communicated this shift—literally and metaphorically—by pulling signs and symbols into dimensional space.

Recent Work

Animation of two graphic white parenthesis coming towards each other. Right before they meet in the middle two white circles appear and blink to create a playful face with eyes.
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Embrace

Positioning a category-creating brand to go big.

Animation of the Aperian logo in black text moving from a simple "A" that then expands into a thicker more square like graphic on a cream color background
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Aperian

Bringing a people-led company into a product-led future.

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