Creating Precium's Brand Identity

Alloys can be found all around us – from your familiar office building to rockets destined for space exploration. They are defined as: a mixture of chemical elements of which at least one is a metal. The mixture of elements is precisely controlled to produce a desirable result.

They are in application adaptable, useful, strong, and vibrant. In the early days of brainstorming new names, we were inspired by the concept of an alloy as a representation of the stability and adaptability required to support the complex payments needs of the modern enterprise and their customers. 

The Precium (pronounced press-ee-um) brand identity was a collaboration between internal teams and experienced creative agencies. Explore the intention and ideas behind each decision. 

Choosing a name

Precium’s defining belief is that payments should be a revenue enabler, not a cost centre. To do this skilfully at scale for enterprise businesses, we immerse the Precium team in our merchants’ business. Each business has its own complex set of needs and priorities; to unlock the full potential of payments infrastructure at scale requires in-depth engagement and collaboration. 

This coming together of strengths, like an alloy, is what inspired our name. 

What do we bring to the table? 

Stability > a configurable, reliable payment system that handles complexity for merchants

Partnership > a customer-centric approach to building, implementing, and optimising

Security > trust in our teams’ ability to build and maintain world-class systems and operations 

Precium immediately rose to the top of the list. It means ‘pay’, ‘reward’, or ‘worth’ in Latin; this simplicity resonated with our ambition to streamline and simplify payments for our merchants, and aligned with our values of seeking truth and transparency. It also alludes to a platinum alloy with a precious metal content of almost 90% – embodying our core principle of being a brand and team of substance and quality, here to last the times. This name evoked an immediate sense of the texture of the identity, shown lower down in the metallic accents and gradients. 

Logo and brandmark design

Our new logo encapsulates our company’s core values, mission, and ambition, representing Precium as an alloy: an addition that increases stability, resilience, and responsiveness to ever-changing payment trends and points of failure.

Each element of the brandmark symbolises a principle and together, they represent Precium. 

The circle, symbolising unity and perfection, reflects our commitment to creating a unified payments system that minimises complexity and payment failure. It represents our core values of “winning the match, together” and the spirit of partnership we embrace within our team and with our clients. 

The square, known for its representation of structure and order, symbolises Precium's robust technical foundation, payment performance reliability, and delivery of the highest service excellence.

Combining these seemingly contradictory elements highlights the unique combination of stability, flexibility, and agility required in the modern enterprise payment stack to reach and retain more customers.

The brandmark is also reminiscent of the Revio logo – a nod to our history.

Textures

As flat, minimal design took centre stage in brand identity building, gradients fell out of popularity. But as most things do, gradients have once again caught the trend wave. 

In order to make a strategic, long-term decision, we explore how gradients could bring texture and cohesion to our brand system. 

Our gradients are used as backgrounds and are by default: non-linear, with at least three colours and grain. They bring a sense of motion to our web design. (see above in the brandmark) 

Our visual library also contains alloy-inspired textures to bring our new name to life. The metallic accents seek to modernise the brand identity, balancing a palette with the potential to lean whimsical rather than contemporary. 

Type

Precium’s new font, Rethink Sans, was created by Hans Thiessen for a Vancouver independent creative agency to “help everyone design with greater confidence and craft in the Google workspace”. During the rebrand process, we explored several fonts searching for the right mix of clarity, flexibility, and dynamism. 

From commercial to corporate usage, Rethink Sans gives us the ability to dial our tone up or down in formality. Its variety in weight and language support sealed the deal. 

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Colours

Our core colours are purple variants. Purple is a brand colour found across categories: from confectionery (“Cadbury”) to sports (“LA Lakers”) and even tertiary education institutions (“New York University”). This confirms its ability to be an adaptable colour. 

Precium’s clients also transition between categories; from Insurance, to E-commerce, and Retail, we enable and optimise payments for businesses of all kinds. So, in differing contexts, our identity needs to be adaptable without losing its essence. Purple can denote creativity, wealth, leadership, and trust simultaneously. 

We decided to add a pop of delight to our colour identity. The complete palette sees the addition of accent colours: a gradient silver and turquoise. 

The rebrand represented a unique opportunity to reflect on our business and brand. While identity building for Precium has been an absorbing exploration of how we show up in the market, the real work comes in how we serve and build for our clients. 

We are the first African payment platform purpose-built for enterprise. We aim to have a global impact helping businesses optimise payment performance, automate financial operations, and craft extraordinary customer experiences through our modular payment platform. 

“What started as a venture to provide world-class payment technologies to South African merchants has since become a platform to enable global merchants to access emerging African markets. While our operations remain firmly rooted in South Africa, more and more of our clients are companies abroad. Our rebrand aims to capture our evolution into a globally competitive payment infrastructure platform, purpose-built for enterprise scale,” says Nicole Dunn, Co-Founder and COO at Precium. 

“The end product of the rebrand is an identity that truly represents us. After a long process, many nights of deliberation, and testing with local and global clients, we are thrilled to re-introduce ourselves as the first African payments platform purpose built for enterprise.”