In early 2026, a cybersecurity startup reached out looking for a brand from the ground up.
The founders were two former CrowdStrike employees with a simple idea. Incident response is still painfully manual, while attackers are moving at machine speed. AI could change that. The company just needed a brand that felt as capable as the product they were building.
I liked the team immediately from our first vibe-check call.
I also liked the name. Extrordinas isn't a made-up AI word or another tech acronym. Founder Clark pulled it from the Extraordinarii of the Roman Legion, an elite force called in when things started falling apart. The people you wanted showing up when everyone else was in trouble. It also hints at being extraordinary without feeling forced.
And honestly, it's always nice when a startup lands a one-word company name.
The Strategy
Every project starts in the same place. Figuring out what the company is actually trying to become.
We spent a lot of time in strategy workshops digging into competitors, positioning, values, personality, customer tension, and what would eventually become the central brand idea. At one point founder Jai laughed and called the discovery process "brand therapy."
He's not wrong. The work kept pointing back to the same idea.
Conquer Chaos.
Cybersecurity wasn't built for today's threat landscape. Incidents used to unfold over days or weeks. Analysts had time. Response was manual.
That world doesn't exist anymore.
Attackers move at machine speed now. Winning means matching that speed without losing human judgment. Automation alone creates noise. Humans alone can't keep up. Extrordinas lives in the middle, using AI for speed and people for clarity.
Everything that came after was measured against that idea.
The Exploration
One thing became obvious pretty quickly. Cybersecurity brands all start looking the same.
Every company has a shield. A lock. A spark. A glowing network. Throw in a blue gradient and you've covered about eighty percent of the category.
Our goal was to build something that felt trustworthy, technical, premium, and precise without leaning on the usual visual shortcuts.
Three identity directions made it onto the wall.
The direction that won was built around an abstract representation of a data breach. On its own, the symbol feels incomplete. Slide it into the logotype and everything clicks into place.
It became a simple visual metaphor for what Extrordinas actually does.Identify the problem. Resolve it quickly. Restore order.
It also turned into an incredibly flexible system. The mark works as a tiny favicon, scales into oversized graphic elements, and became a core part of the photography and motion language.
The Refinement
The final logo was rebuilt to sit between Medium and Semibold in CoType Foundry's Aeonik. It sounds obsessive because it is. That tiny adjustment made the wordmark feel more balanced and gave it just enough confidence without becoming heavy.
Aeonik became the workhorse of the identity. Precise. Clean. Approachable.
To offset it, we paired it with Displaay's Serrif, which added a little warmth and editorial character without softening the brand.
Once the identity was locked, we built out the rest of the system. Color. Typography. Usage. Custom backgrounds. Plenty of examples showing how the brand behaves in the real world instead of just sitting inside a PDF.
Bringing It to Life
The identity was only part of the launch.
Working alongside Greg Montemurro, the brand extended into a custom website while we finished the supporting pieces. Presentation templates. Business cards. Apparel. Launch motion graphics. Everything a new company needs before introducing itself to the world.
The Launch
One of the things I love most about branding is getting dropped into industries I know almost nothing about.
A few months earlier I couldn't have explained the incident response workflow. By the end of the project, I understood the space, the customers, the competitors, and why this company deserved to exist.
You start with a blank page and a few conversations. Eventually it turns into a company that feels real.
It's been cool seeing the work slowly roll out. I have a feeling Extrordinas is just getting started.
