Elevating a brand to break through stereotypes
How strategy and ideology helped us build a different kind of web experience for a different kind of builder.
INTRODUCTION
Most notions of the construction industry come with an enduring set of associations: hammers and nails, 2×4’s, 4×4’s, clouds of dust, noise, shouting over noise, the color orange.
Align Builders is much more than that. They’re experts in technical construction—precision projects for industries like healthcare, higher ed, science and technology. But their real superpower is streamlining the building process, and they needed their brand to challenge the stereotype of construction being an exclusionary process of headaches and setbacks, and instead show high-caliber clients how they do it differently. Here’s how we elevated Align’s brand experience, with takeaways that could apply to any industry.
INSIGHTS
Start with a strong foundation
During our strategy phase, we saw the opportunity for Align’s brand to change what clients should expect from a builder. Align was leading this change with a novel process: starting with 100% alignment at the outset, transparency throughout the job, and actively involving the client from start to finish. (Quite similar to how we work at Traina, actually.)
These qualities became the cornerstone for brand messaging that inspires confidence and sets a clear expectation for what the client will experience: more clarity, greater insight, and less chaos—the Align Way.

Be your difference
You can’t talk about custom building on a generic website, and you can’t emphasize attention to detail on a page that doesn’t function. We built Align a custom web experience that has both polish and performance, and functions in a way that showcases their expertise as a builder and their client-first ethos.
At the core of the site is a flexible grid system that keeps laser focus on alignment and balance, while allowing moving elements and dynamic scaling to bring the site to life. This movement throughout the experience lends a sense that the page is being built in real-time, to exacting specifications, with the viewer an active part of the process. The result is a digital experience worthy of Align’s tagline, Building Together.



Sweat the small stuff
Technical builders see details others don’t. So do we, albeit in the branding world. Take a visual design system, starting with Align’s original logo, a slightly abstracted “A”. Says our associate creative director Joe Ross, “When you see the full letter, top-to-bottom, it becomes a blunt, flat statement. But encircling it draws focus to the apex—and there’s no telling how far it goes, which is an entirely new narrative in one visual instant.”
A subtle shift in color palette—from safety orange to refined gold—tells another visual story, conveying a brand that’s less work-in-progress and more finished product. Serif fonts and large typographic features also make Align stand out from the competition, an immediate visual cue that their entire approach and experience is informed by quality design.

RESULTS
A brand built for building
The overall result for Align is a comprehensive and cohesive brand expression, one that resonates even just after launch: “Everyone seems to really connect with our new look and voice,” says Align’s marketing director, Melissa Weinberger. “Our employees are proud to share the website and excited to feel the positive effects of leveling up our external presence.”
Align Builders was already at the next level in construction, and now with a brand making that apparent from the outset, they are poised for new clients ready to experience what it means to Build Together.
Experience Align’s digital transformation at: alignbuilders.com

