Max Cove
ERAPS, which stands for Executive Regulatory Affairs Professional Search, came to me and my team at Delphi to help refresh their brand and overhaul their existing website and online presence. Already an established recruitment firm in the biopharma community across the U.S. and Western Europe, their CEO and founder, Brandan Sweeney, enlisted our expertise to help his company truly stand out from their growing field of competitors. After taking the time to sit down with and get to know Brandan and his team, what immediately stood out to me was their true passion for this work, which revolves around making crucial connections between highly-skilled candidates and innovative companies aiming to introduce new medicines and technology to the world, as well as their down-to-earth and down right humorous personalities. ERAPS wanted to capture that dichotomy in their brand, this play on the left and right brain of it all: how can we appear to be trustworthy and ethical, while also approachable, genuine, and maybe a little fun? With all that in mind, it became my mission to position ERAPS as a top recruitment leader defined by heart and some "outside the box" creativity.
Creative Direction
Brand & Identity Design
Website Development & Design
Primary Logo and Alternate Lockups
Letterhead and One Sheet
Social Media Imagery
Website
The first key part of this process was taking a fresh, more abstract approach to the design of their logomark: An intertwined DNA strand, which perfectly encapsulates the core element of their industry and their own essential mission of creating impactful connections between candidates and employers. The new mark clearly embraces the traditional double helix shape of DNA, but in this design the two overlapping “strands” that signify the employer and candidate coming together are each built of three parts representing the hills and valleys of their journeys to finally get matched. The strands in their overlapping transparency create new shapes, which can be selectively broken apart, layered, and rearranged to further illustrate all of the pieces of the recruitment journey coming together and create a singular visual style to the ERAPS brand.
We wanted to utilize colors that would evoke the bright, innovative industries that ERAPS works within, while implementing a combo of typefaces to establish their authority and approachability. The energized green and blue primary colors also represent the natural, biological world that their clients interact with on a daily basis. The heavy weighted, angular Aktiv Grotesk captures their serious approach and utilized for top headlines and display text. Acumin Wide Light provides a pleasing contrast with its delicate weight and friendly appeal for body copy and secondary headlines.
Once the brand identity had been fully fleshed out and approved with flying colors by Brandan and the team, it was time to bring the ERAPS online home to life. As a company dedicated to innovative thinkers and game-changing technology, it only made sense to design and build their site on one the most dynamic, powerful website builders out there: Webflow. Taking advantage of their incredible no-code developer tools, I was able to add a variety of stunning motion and animations throughout the site, which included having their logomark DNA strand twist in and out of view on key pages just as the double helix is known to do. The site development also provided opportunities to further explore the visual world of ERAPS with the creation of custom graphics for their blog and new variations of the DNA strand which allowed us to embed real imagery of clients and employers within the core strands to drive home the idea of their work being truly woven into their own genetic code.
