Hub Proptech: brand identity for a proptech and insurtech hub with 11,000+ members

Hub Proptech is a hub for proptech and insurtech: technology applied to real estate and insurance. A hub is a connection point: it brings together the key players in an industry and lets them meet, work together and build networks for sharing resources that speed up their growth. Hub Proptech's community has more than 11,000 members. DataLab was in charge of its brand identity.

A community that brings together two industries, real estate and insurance, plus the technology reshaping them, needs a brand no one feels is someone else's. The challenge was to design an identity that looks credible to traditional industries and current to the startup world, and that works just as well in a pitch deck, a formal document and a social post. A community brand also isn't used by one person: many people use it, and each of them has to be able to apply it without breaking it.

If the identity ships as a system with clear rules, not as a standalone logo, the community can grow and communicate without the brand getting diluted with every new piece. Visual consistency is what makes a hub read as one place, even when many voices are speaking.

The deliverable was a complete identity system with four components: logo, guidelines, stationery and social media assets. It is the brand of a community of 11,000+ members. This project doesn't report performance metrics: its result is an identity ready for every touchpoint of the hub, with rules that protect it when many hands use it.

In a community, the brand doesn't belong only to the team that manages it: many people use it. That's why an identity is only as good as its guidelines. Clear rules are what keep the brand coherent as the community grows. In the lab we put it this way: a good idea needs a system to survive everyday use.