VAT Talent

Recruitment brands tend to look alike: blue gradients and stock handshakes. VAT Talent was starting from zero and needed to be recognisable to two audiences at once, the people looking for work and the companies looking for people.

Branding, website and social were all built from scratch. The website and the foundations came first; social followed.

The client proposed “VAT”, after a traditional brew from Kerala. Brewing is slow, careful and refined, which is how they wanted to treat talent.

That gave me one idea to build everything else on.

I designed the logo with no earlier versions to work from. It joins three things: a circle for the person, a funnel that channels and points upward, and a drop for the brew.

The palette follows the values. Teal Blue stands for empathy and growth, Cool Grey for trust and accountability, Snow for clarity.

Logomark, wordmark, lock-ups, clear space and misuse. Colour and named gradients. Raleway for headings, Poppins for text. Background shapes cut from the mark itself, and a moodboard for imagery.

I designed every page for desktop and mobile on a shared component set and type scale: Home, Find a Job, Hire Talent, About, the team pages, Insights and Contact.

The site speaks to both audiences from the first screen. Candidates and employers each get their own path, their own page and their own set of questions answered.

The same identity has to carry an industry explainer, a founder’s opinion, a job opening and a birthday. Each kind of post has its own template, so the feed stays varied without drifting off brand.

A single long sheet that says who VAT Talent is, what it does and how it works, for sending ahead of a first conversation.

On this account I use Claude with connectors to Figma and image tools to automate the repetitive parts of asset production. It leaves more of the week for ideas.

VAT Talent now partners with DBiz itself for recruitment, and the brand has the footing to keep building its network in Australia.