Activ8 Solar Energies wordmark paired with the 'In Partnership with SSE Airtricity' lock-up, set against a black background with two solar panel corners

Activ8 Solar Energies · Commercial Rebrand · Senior Multimedia Designer

An identity for a different kind of customer.

☕ about a 2-minute read

Overview

Activ8 Solar Energies had one brand doing two jobs: winning small residential installs and closing large commercial contracts. The commercial side needed its own identity, something that read as bespoke to a procurement team while still sitting recognisably inside the Activ8 family.

Commercial buyers don’t decide on a lanyard. They decide over a longer cycle, through decks, proposals and a website that has to hold up under scrutiny, so the system had to work as hard in a boardroom as it does on a business card.

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distinct brand experiences, one shared family — domestic and commercial
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strategic partner, SSE Airtricity, carried through every touchpoint
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touchpoint families, one system — identity to portal

The brief

Activ8’s residential brand had to stay warm and approachable: homeowners, quick decisions, an emotional purchase; commercial needed the opposite register: able to sit in a tender document next to competitors twice its size. Rather than a new logo, the fix layered a new palette and material language onto the same mark: deep black, a warmer gradient, and print stock that felt expensive to hold.

Brand colour and material palette — jet black, bright white and mid-tone grey alongside the signature orange-red gradient, paired with a monochrome aerial photo of a solar farm and wind turbine
Front and back of the commercial business card, showing the black textured Activ8 x SSE Airtricity lock-up and Martin Mulholland's Commercial Operations Director details
Two premium textured folders in black with orange and gold edge colouring, fastened with cord-and-disc closures

Collateral

Commercial solar isn’t bought on impulse; it’s bought after a deck, a site visit, a proposal and a folder left behind in a boardroom. Every piece of collateral had to survive that scrutiny: a pitch deck built to sit next to partners like AIB and SSE Arena, and print finishing where the fastenings on a folder became part of the brand.

Collage of commercial pitch deck slides — partner logos including AIB, SSE Arena and Microsoft, a 'why choose solar' slide, a regional coverage map and an Activ8 company timeline
Black branded folder alongside a letterhead template with the Activ8 x SSE Airtricity header
Open branded folder revealing an orange gradient solar-textured insert card alongside the letterhead
“Bespoke enough for a boardroom, familiar enough to still be Activ8.” ✳

Digital

The commercial offer needed its own front door online: Atlas, a dedicated site for the storage, heat pump and solar propositions sold into businesses, sitting under the wider Activ8 domain and app ecosystem rather than standing apart on its own.

Laptop showing the Atlas commercial website homepage: 'Business is unpredictable. Your power shouldn't be.'
Close-up of an iPhone home screen with the Activ8 Portal app icon
Desktop scene showing the Atlas commercial website homepage displayed on a monitor in a studio setup

Outcome

Away from the pitch, the same system had to hold up in the everyday: ID badges and lanyards for the team, a CV template for hiring, even the tab title in a browser. Small details like these are what make a brand feel real rather than assembled for the meeting.

Activ8 lanyards and ID badges for 'Conor Murtagh, Senior Multimedia Designer', shown in three layouts
Folded CV template for Solar Engineer Martin Mulholland, applying the Activ8 x SSE Airtricity brand to internal HR documents
Browser tab mockup reading 'Activ8 – Premium Solar Solutions' at the activ8energies.com address