Logo​ Design Brief 

 

CSA - Commercial Solar Advisors 

Michael Johnson 

January 2021 

 
Michael Johnson Marine Thibault  
Founder, Advisor Designer 

   
CSA - Commercial Solar Advisors 

Website 
http://www.csadvisors.org 

Note: a new version of the website was recently launched and has not yet been 
branded. 

Company Bio 
FINANCIAL SERVICES IN RENEWABLE ENERGY 

Commercial Solar Advisors (CSA) is a renewable energy investment advisory 

company based in Northern California that provides financial services to developers, 
investors, utilities, and EPCs (Engineering, Procurement, and Contracting companies 
-- builders). T
​ he company connects projects (developer portfolio) to investment 
(capital) to​ r​ aise capital, structure financing, and sell project portfolios in Solar, 
Geothermal, Storage, Transmission and Biomass energy​. With more than 15 years 
of experience in the renewable energy sector, CSA has worked with buyers and 
sellers of projects of all sizes, from small one-off C&I projects to 100MW portfolios. 

Services 
CSA raises sponsor equity, tax equity, and debt for solar, geothermal, offshore 
transmission, and renewable energy storage projects. We also help to source, 
structure, and close acquisition financing transactions for developers who want to 
sell a project or portfolio. In many cases our developers are interested in acquisition 
financing where an investor is going to buy a project or portfolio. 

The company specializes in tracking the dynamic market of renewable energy 

investors and knowing which ones have the lowest cost of capital and the best 
appetite for a particular portfolio. 
Project Example 
30MW portfolio for an EPC in New York State: they were selling their portfolio and 
had an offer with an investor priced at $1.54/MW when they reached out to CSA. We 
found a higher bidder that offered $1.72/MW and helped close the deal, raising the 
value of the portfolio by $5.4 million.  

Competition 
Competitors include ​energy project financing and renewable energy investment 
banking companies. A few names: 
 
 

CohnReznick Capital 

NextPower Capital 

Marathon Capital  
 

HamiltonClark 

 
  

Target Audience 
Developers / EPCs: 
They include large scale energy innovation solution providers, power producers, and 
energy project developers. A few names: 
 
ZGlobal  
Sky Capital 
Solops 
 
Investors:  

1. Financial institutes: B
​ lack Rock​, Goldman Sachs investors 
2. Independent power producers (IPP): Southern Company, ​Exelon 
3. Infrastructure Funds: F ​ irst Reserve​ (invest in energy projects) 
4. Fortune 500 companies (get money from Black Rock) 
5. Private companies: T ​ enaska 

 
Marketing and Business Goals 
The goal of a new logo is to elevate the company as it evolves into a new brand with 
more relevance to the type of services it offers. CSA also wants to be positioned to 
include ​more/future technologies in addition to solar, geothermal, and storage i​ n its 
arsenal, which should be reflected in the logo.​ ​Ultimately the company wants to raise 
recognition, capture new clients, and build long term relationships with its target 
audience. 

Logo Requirements & Deliverable 

Exact text/wordmark to be used for the logo design​: CSA 

The acronym has built more brand in the last 15 years than the full name, and the 
company wishes to build on it with the new logo. 

Requirements​: This custom logo can be either a combination of wordmark and 

symbol, or just a wordmark of the 3 letter acronym. 

Deliverable​: The original Logo should be created in vector and SVG (if possible) 
formats, then you’ll export the logo to a raster format, including favicon (.ico) for 
delivery. 

Creative Directions 
icon + CSA (the acronym) 
Or the letters CSA as wordmark only 
 

If a symbol is created, it should represent financing and/or green energy 

technologies, such as solar, geothermal, storage, transmission and biomass. 

Brand personality 
We have characterized CSA’s branding personality into 2 key qualifiers, with the 
following descriptions: 

PRESTIGE 

This is the language of ​excellence​. CSA advisors define new higher standards for the 
group and help achieve that excellence through attention to detail. Typically focused 
and ambitious, efficiently managing their time. Careful and deliberate, often 
choosing paths that will bring them a sense of achievement as well as recognition. 
Tend to improve upon the ideas of others instead of generating big ideas 
themselves. 

MYSTIQUE 

This is the language of ​listening​. CSA advisors maintain a professional distance at all 
times. More focused than other types, they spend less time socializing, and avoid 
distractions. They usually do not jump to conclusions but rather take time to 
research an answer. Their premeditated statements can be perceived as higher 
caliber. 

Visual Identity 

Our visual identity aims to inspire trust, ethics, sincerity, style. 

We are open for exploration based on the color/personality trait associations that 
CSA identifies as, below. But as general guideline, we want to stay away from pink, 
purple, brown, and ​focus on hues of light and dark blue, red, black and white​.   
  

Brand Typography 

We have no preferred typeface for the logo wordmark.  

The website uses ​Poppins​ (serif, light, rounded) throughout. Most competitors use 
serif fonts. 

Logo Color Preferences 

No specific color preferences, and open to exporations with 1 or 2 colors based on 
visual identity guidelines above. 

Brand Imagery 

Our choice of imagery in our communications focus on rich photography depicting 

various renewable energy technologies in natural environments. 

Timing 
We would like to have a finalized logo design in one week.