Building a Bolder BLACKLINE: An Inside Look at Our New Brand

Capital Placement Partners has reinvented itself as BLACKLINE. We’re pleased to meet you.

For the past few months, we’ve been hard at work developing a new brand identity. We partnered with Brand Designer Andrew Pons to roll out a refreshed logo, a focused new color palette, and a clear set of guidelines to carry our brand into the future. It’s a big move up, and we’d like to show you around the new place.

What Were Our Goals?

As BLACKLINE continues to solidify its place in the commercial real estate market, our visual identity needs to do the same. We had three core goals:

1. Reflect Our Strength. The commercial real estate world is built on strong foundations. Our brand needs to reflect our institutional-grade service and industry expertise.
   
   

2. Establish Clarity and Consistency. As we grow, our brand needs to be instantly recognizable across all the markets we operate in. A key goal was to create a simple, powerful, and repeatable system that anyone on the team can use.
   
   

3. Create a Timeless Foundation. We didn't want a trendy look that would be dated in two years. We aimed for a minimal and focused identity that feels professional and powerful, while still retaining plenty of space to evolve along with our business.

The New Design Elements

Our new visual identity has all the elements you’d expect from a focused and unified brand system. 

The Logo

The heart of the new brand is our wordmark. It’s designed to be strong and simple, relying on the boldness of the typography for visual impact.

The most distinct element is the thick underscore that adds positive tension to the balance of the logo. It gives the mark a solid base and a sense of contained energy. We developed the primary stacked logo for most uses and a horizontal lockup for situations where space constraints call for it. 

The Color Palette

We completely redefined our color system to be minimal and focused.

Our primary palette consists of just two colors: Jet Black and Concrete. This simple, high-contrast pairing is the foundation of our look. The logo should always be displayed in one of these two colors.

To add energy and highlight specific information, we've introduced a small selection of highlights: Monstera, Moonbeam, and Mandarin. These are to be used sparingly and with purpose — perfect for charts, call-to-action buttons, or data visualization. For added range, these colors can also be used with opacity values in increments of 25%.

Icons and Graphics

Our four primary sectors are represented by a set of dedicated icons constructed with bold geometry, and our minimalist spot illustrations come to life on our new website.

Typography

We wanted a flexible but timeless font that would lend a neutral, confident tone to our content. Switzer by Indian Type Foundry was the perfect candidate. With plenty of weights to choose from, Switzer gives our brand the flexibility to use type as a primary design element.

A Continuous Effort

We see this refresh as the start of a new chapter for BLACKLINE. A brand is a living thing, and we’ll continue to evolve and build upon this new foundation. We've set our own bar high, and we look forward to continuing to raise it even further.