After over a decade of pioneering human-centered approaches to solving the energy sector’s most pressing challenges, ILLUME Advising is introducing a refreshed brand identity that embraces the company’s optimistic and dogged commitment to progress and a call back to the color of its founding brand. 

This transformation represents more than just a visual update – it embodies the company's growth and deepening commitment to solving complex energy challenges through a uniquely human-focused lens. 

The ILLUME Difference: People-First Problem Solving

At its core, ILLUME distinguishes itself through its uniquely collaborative and human-centered approach to problem-solving for change. The company's practice areas are intentionally organized around problems rather than methodologies or specific energy resources, reflecting its focus on addressing clients’ needs with real-world solutions that work for people. These areas include:

• Affordability, Access, and Resilience: Ensuring energy solutions serve all populations effectively while addressing systemic barriers to change so all can thrive in an energy future. 
• Emerging Opportunities: Identifying the most optimal market, technology, and engagement solutions – and developing roadmaps to deploy them – so clients can reach their policy, energy, and regulatory goals. 
• Evaluation and Success Planning: Developing systems, tools, and techniques to anticipate, measure, and track clients’ progress and impacts to ensure success and embrace continuous improvement. 
• Human Insights: Understanding the dynamic and diverse drivers of market, population, communities, businesses, households, and individuals’ behaviors to drive high-impact change. 

ILLUME’s Brand Evolution

ILLUME’s in-house Marketing and Design Team has worked tirelessly to bring this vision to life. ILLUME's brand journey mirrors its growth as a company. Founded with the revolutionary approach of centering human needs in energy innovation, ILLUME initially stood out for its bold, youthful, and outspoken presence in an industry often focused purely on technical solutions. The company's early brand featured light backgrounds and its signature teal color, reflecting its fresh perspective in the energy sector.

As the company matured, it adopted a striking black-and-white aesthetic with color accents – an unconventional choice that served the company well for many years. This visual identity, characterized by dramatic black-and-white photography and high-contrast designs, symbolized ILLUME's commitment to art as a medium to communicate complex ideas and strategies while also maintaining its distinctive presence in the industry. This rebranding also reflects the creativity, expertise, and passion of our Team.

Catalyzing Change Through Collaboration and Creative Expression

The launch of ILLUME's annual magazine in 2018 marked a pivotal moment in the company's brand evolution. The publication became a creative laboratory for sharing the company’s unique point of view and expanding its visual language and voice. Through this platform, ILLUME began introducing vibrant, high-contrast colors and unconventional design elements, including neons and bright hues, while maintaining the impact of its signature high-contrast approach to draw readers into the company’s thought leadership.

The publication's resounding success spurred ILLUME’s ChangeMaker sub-brand, which created collaborative spaces through webinars, podcasts, and client forums. Through these engagements, ILLUME built the reputation of a firm that will lean into challenging topics to arrive at solutions and better outcomes for the company’s clients and partners.

A Balance of Heart and Expertise

ILLUME's refreshed brand voice strikes a careful balance. While maintaining the emotional intelligence and human focus that has always been its hallmark, the new identity incorporates more technical language to reflect the company's expanded capabilities. This evolution makes ILLUME's expertise more accessible to other industries and clients while avoiding industry jargon that could create barriers to understanding to interested members of the public.

An Ambidextrous Team

Behind ILLUME's success is a diverse team of professionals who combine expertise across multiple fields of practice including social science, data science, market research, engineering, policy advising, and program implementation, among others. This "ambidextrous" team brings together creative minds committed to progress and rigor. Their shared passion for client success and ultimate focus on improving people's well-being drives ILLUME’s work.

The refreshed brand identity represents not just where ILLUME has been, but where it's going – continuing to lead the energy sector with solutions that put people first while addressing critical technical and social challenges we face in an evolving industry.