Heroic Rhino: Danish startup accelerator with global intentions

Founded by a group of advisors and digital business visionaries, Heroic Rhino is about to redefine the startup mentorship program.

About the project

Making startup dreams materialize

Heroic Rhino believes that every small business deserves a fair chance to get the right advice from mentors who have the proven experience, the willingness to give back, and the knowledge to do so. The availability of mentoring and professional advice for entrepreneurs that Heroic Rhino provides will lay the grounds for smarter, faster, and better business decisions.

Mission

In the entangled jungle of the global community, the accelerator for startups is on a mission to pave the way for founders to identify the best mentor talent out there. Heroic Rhino strives to build successful and long-lasting founder/mentor relations, so their project is set on strengthening the business community.

Design philosophy

A combination of strength, vigour, and lighthearted fun

Unlike other business acceleration projects, Heroic Rhino is ready to experiment with unorthodox designs. We wanted to capture this difference and maintain the unique vibe in the company’s branding.

Design features

Natural colors and textures
Solid typography
Wild backgrounds
Psychedelic illustrations
Vibrant UI design elements
Ironic illustrations and graphics

Design scaffolding

When collaborating with the Heroic Rhino startup accelerator, we opted for a gradual immersion into the client’s universe and a subsequent progression toward the design decisions. We study the business or its vision and form a deep understanding of the value it brings. We call the process “scaffolding”, and it’s a must-have phase to grasp the future state of the project it needs to achieve.

Discovery Early sketches Final form Brand collateral

Discovery

Together with the founders of the startup accelerator program, we took lots of inspiration from the conceptual mobile designs with 3D and faux-3D illustrations. Despite this style looking cool, it hardly applies to the functional interface of a consumer app. So instead of driving the UI design phase, we took this trend in during the brand identity design phase.

Early sketches

One of the perks of working with a brand with an unusual name is not having to dig deep for metaphors. The Heroic Rhino name is self-explanatory. So with brand attributes at hand and a unique name to build upon, we started in the direction of a monogram. We engraved in the letters of the name attributes, and others were expressed in the physical qualities of the wordmark.

Final lockup

The strength of a visual clue in the R glyph is bigger than the rest of the logo, so we dropped the monogram and went full rhino silhouette instead. A slight 3D effect gave it some dimension and solidity. We toned it down a bit on the wordmark to create what appeared to be a perfect form combining the decisiveness of a rhino and the calm, collected mindset of a business mentor.

Brand collateral

For an accelerator program for startups, it is crucial to have a physical presence. It adds credibility to the value the product brings in the digital space. The best way to do this is to design a lineup of physical items that are easy to manufacture but have a direct impact on everyday life. Those simple EDC items do not provide a ton of insights into the brand vision but that’s not what they are made for. To compensate for this, we have created a set of complex abstract illustrations that reflect the multi-faceted value Heroic Rhino brings.

Outcome

The brand identity system we created for Heroic Rhino became the staple of the future mobile app and website design. The brand has then revealed itself to the public through unorthodox social media posts and active engagement with followers. The app is in the final stage of development and will see the light later this year. If you are a startup founder looking for effective business acceleration – give Heroic Rhino a shot and come say hi from Shakuro!

Producer comment

Heroic Rhino is one of those rare projects that are fun to work on from the very beginning to the very end. The excitement doesn’t fade and the story keeps getting better – how many more walls can the golden rhino break through?
Moses Kim
Creative Producer