Recognizing the need for an industry-defining brand that matched their vision and maturity, Modulate partnered with Star Catcher to refresh their brand identity ahead of some major company milestones.
As with everything we do, our strategy began by defining Star Catcher's core narrative. We ultimately anchored their mission — to build the first power grid in space — around a powerful, instantly recognizable character: the Sun.
Star Catcher's new branding brings the Sun front and center, while adding warmth to signal promise, potential, and illumination.
Deep Space
Stellar Dust
Sol Yellow
Sunset
The previous branding was dominated by blues, as is most of the space industry. In addition to reflecting none of the company's actual technology or vision, it included a specific bright blue optimized for digital screens. This created significant practical issues, as the color could not be consistently replicated in printed materials, leading to brand inconsistency across media.
The previous branding was not effectively communicating the company's full mission or technological capabilities. It relied heavily on AI-generated imagery that was not accurately depicting Star Catcher's technology or future vision, resulting in a confusing and ultimately weak brand message.
Adopting the Sun as Star Catcher's core narrative element, Modulate designed a robust and versatile brand system engineered for long-term growth and dual-market appeal.
We developed a system that avoids the limitations of the previous brand, ensuring colors are safely and consistently reproducible across both digital and physical (print) mediums.
The resulting palette is impactful and unique on both dark and light backgrounds, providing the flexibility needed for all communication channels, from technical documents for government entities to commercial marketing materials and social media applications.
Space technology is built to advance humanity, on Earth and beyond. As such, the secondary palette was strategically introduced to represent the Earth, Moon, and other elements of our universe. We incorporated the existing electric blue to ensure a smooth transition and compatibility with current assets.
We collaborated closely with Star Catcher to create scroll-stopping renders, allowing us to remove the existing incorrect and misleading visuals. To further reinforce and maintain brand consistency, we also established a uniform color treatment for all photography assets. Notice how the warm tones create an inviting and appealing vibe, a strategic choice to elevate the human side of Star Catcher's technology.
Modulate built Star Catcher an entirely new website, from skeleton and customer journey mapping to content, design, build, and deployment. We focused on highlighting the company’s mission, technology capabilities, and applications early in the viewer’s journey. We also added pages that highlighted Star Catcher’s development timeline and growth, in addition to the team's expertise, to help site visitors fully understand their innovation and impact. The site is built in a modern, scalable back-end that doesn't force vendor-lock and allows the team freedom to grow unconstrained.
During the brand refresh, Modulate decided to keep one of Star Catcher’s initial typefaces, Monument, for headlines and statements. It captured the technical aspects of the company while also feeling futuristic.
We did update the body copy typeface to Gotham as it added a modern and present-day vibe, while still evoking futurism through classical letterforms. With the wide range of weights: light, book, medium, bold, and ultra and accompanying italics, Star Catcher’s font options now offer customized emphasis and expressive opportunities for tone through design. The open letterforms make it easy to use for both small text and larger headlines, a necessary element when designing for smaller materials and assets that can be viewed on smaller devices like phone screens.
Inter and Inter Tight are used for all web and digital templates (which we also optimized for engineering team use) to maintain universal brand consistency and user ease across multi-suite platforms including Google and Microsoft.
Modulate also brought together a team that produced several documentary-style videos to amplify their message and establish new branding across multiple platforms and social media channels.
And finally, no branding project is complete without a refresh to the physical office space. Modulate worked with the Star Catcher team to update all office space branding in their current building, transitioning from the old blue coloring to the new Sol Yellow and Deep Space.
The rebrand included a new website evolving the former AI-image heavy site and early messaging into a cohesive story across pages covering education and impact, built to scale with future needs.