Brand identity · 2025
Benchmarq
Compliance software for small trade businesses — automotive first.
Mark & motionTypeColour systemGuidelines
Compliance software for small trade businesses — automotive first.
Benchmarq is a compliance platform for small trade businesses — qualification tracking, complaints, improvement plans, audit-readiness — starting with independent automotive workshops in New Zealand. Today those shops run this on spreadsheets, or pay for enterprise LMS software built for operations ten times their size. Benchmarq is neither: software sized for a three-bay garage, not a dealership chain.
The team is three people, pre-launch, with no existing brand. They came to us for a mark, a wordmark, and a colour system that could carry the product from pitch deck to shipped software without a redesign in between — plus the guidelines to keep it consistent as they build it themselves.
In "Benchmarq" the q is just a letter. Drawn on its own — bowl, stem, then the counter pulling free and locking into an arrowhead — it's the whole icon, built from the same shape as the type rather than a symbol added next to it.
One version per background — the second colour swaps between teal and amber, nothing else changes. Below about 120px wide it drops to the icon alone; below 80px, to the arrow by itself. These four are the only combinations that exist.
Wordmark — light groundWordmark — dark ground
Icon — 80px and up
Arrow only — favicon to app iconBenchmarqbenchmarq.co.nz