CPEX Real Estate is a highly specialized and dedicated real estate brokerage firm that focuses their business in the Northeastern United States.
The firm came to Craft & Root with the vision to entirely rebrand their business and redesign their out-of-date website to establish their positioning in the market as being ahead of the curve.
By incorporating their brand’s recognizable red into the website’s facelift, we reconstructed their website with three main objectives:
- Prioritize user experience
- Provide modern design elements
- Produce architecturally-inspired aesthetics to stand out in a saturated industry
Along with their website rehaul, we created a new logo, brand tag and both digital and print marketing collateral to make sure their brand cohesively breathes, ensuring that their story of commercial real estate comes alive and remains inviting.
Here’s how we did it.
Digital Real Estate: It Begins with WWW.
Initially, CPEX’s website contained a lot of information in a little amount of space. The website had two disparate navigation menus and inconsistent styles of typography and photography. It was difficult for a user to know where to look for the information they sought, and the scrolling ticker paired with the slider hero image provided an overwhelming user experience from the get go.
Opening the Door: The User Experience
Like the moniker of real estate goes, it’s all about location, location, location.
We incorporated a clean navigation menu at the top of the page, with adequate white space and a large hero image across the page to welcome a new user and quickly explain CPEX’s main value proposition: portfolio maximization.
By establishing a hierarchy for the content, a user can easily journey through the site or scroll to explore the services, blog, transaction highlights, and team. We included large call-to-action buttons with short action verb copy so that a user knows where each jump will take them upon the click of a button.
Signing the Lines: Color & Typography
With the usage of neutral tones and pops of their signature burnt red coloring, the corporate palette still feels warm and inviting.
By using large serif fonts for the headers, we established CPEX’s depth of experience, which also plays nicely when paired with the photographic style – at times minimalist, and at others, incorporating historic and older buildings.
The overlapping style allows for the copy and the imagery to exist side-by-side without competition as commercial real estate is all about showcasing properties and at the same time, we wanted to showcase CPEX’s thought leadership knowledge as equally important.
Sprucing Things Up: Iconography
Especially in real estate, pictures play a pivotal role in selling or leasing a property, but iconography is also important to maintain user engagement on an information-heavy website.
We created one-of-a-kind icons, inspired by architecture’s sharp lines, to highlight CPEX’s services: Leasing, Acquisitions, Advisory and Investment Sales.
We also included icons for the blog section and within the branded email template so that across devices and platforms, CPEX’s branding is recognizable and consistent.
Building the Foundation: Logo Design
Before, CPEX Real Estate’s logo was flat with little distinction. The logo included many different styles, which made it unlikely for a user to consider as one cohesive branding element. From the oversized “C”, the lines on the bottom of “PEX,” and “Real Estate” in a serif font coming after “CPEX” rather than stacked, the design looked disjointed and hard to read.
We redeveloped the logo, changing its color from white to navy, stacking the name, and incorporating a 3D rendering of a building for the “E” to give context to the business’ purpose to make for a more clear and recognizable design. With the addition of the building, one can assume the company is about real estate without reading the “Real Estate” serif font below its name.
Going a step further, we created an animated brand tag for usage across social media and video interstitials for marketing purposes.
Standing Proud & Tall: The Wrap Up
Working collaboratively with the CPEX team, we understood their goals and guided them through the rebranding process.
From the beginning, it was important to convey that their story is about specialization – although they have big enterprise knowledge, they have a customer-centric, small business approach to customer service.
We displayed this through warm and inviting colors, complementary photography and typography, and easy-to-use navigation tools.
CPEX laid the ground foundation, we brought in our diversely specialized team, and together, we rebuilt the brand to grow its standing in the commercial real estate industry.
Are you interested in a rebranding, too? Get in touch with us today – we’d be happy to bring your vision to life!