SVP Consulting — brand, positioning & two shipped sites
Brand, strategy and two shipped websites for a two-PhD Antwerp AI consultancy — a fast SEO pilot that held the domain from day one, and the custom WebGL flagship that now runs svp-consulting.ai in production — all end to end by one designer
- Problem — A 2-PhD Antwerp AI consultancy looked like every rival in a field where ~30% of GenAI pilots die after PoC
- Insight — The one position no scaled firm can copy is senior-only delivery — make “the PhDs are the team” legible
- Solution — I built the brand (data-as-particles “Slipstream”), strategy lean canvas, and 2 sites: SEO pilot + WebGL flagship
- Outcome — Fully shipped: the 4-language flagship (EN/FR/NL/DE, WCAG 2.2 AA) is live in production at svp-consulting.ai, replacing the pilot that kept the domain findable while it was built — the whole arc end-to-end by one designer
One designer carried a two-PhD AI consultancy from blank page to live brand and shipped web
SVP Consulting is a PhD-led, senior-only AI & Data-Science boutique in Antwerp serving the Benelux across pharma, semiconductors, biotech and consumer intelligence. The work spanned three connected layers: brand strategy and identity, a verified read of the Belgian AI-consulting market, and two websites that put the brand live.
The flagship hero — 'From data to decision, faster.'
Make AI legible — from data to decision, faster
In a category where every rival sells 'AI expertise', a two-PhD shop needed a position it could actually own
The brief had three jobs in order of urgency: a distinctive brand in a look-alike category, a credible search-visible site fast (business was already arriving), and a flagship that matched a senior-only offer. Underneath sat the real question — why you, not the ten other AI shops in Belgium?
A verified market read surfaced the durable answer: roughly 30% of generative-AI pilots are abandoned after proof-of-concept (Gartner). The one position a two-PhD boutique can credibly own is senior-only delivery — the PhDs are the team — made legible, against a field that staffs projects with juniors.
Strategy first: one insight, one metaphor, one opponent
The brand was pressure-tested on a single lean canvas before any visuals — sourced market analysis, a verified competitive landscape, personas and prioritised bets. The positioning fell out of the research rather than from vibes: senior-only, production-focused, niche-deep.
The anti-brand was named early — black-box AI, junior-staffed slide decks, pilot theatre — and every later choice steered away from it. The organising metaphor, data as fast-moving particles plus speed (the 'Slipstream'), carried both halves of the promise at once and gave the identity something to do, not just look like.
The PhDs are the delivery team, and they make AI legible — a structural position competitors can’t copy without un-scaling
The metaphor became a live particle field, not a static logo
A lowercase italic svp. wordmark — fast, forward-leaning, with the accent dot as the particle. A single signature gradient across four brand hues (blue #1661FE, purple #9524DF, orange #FD8F00, red #F60000) on near-black #050507, used sparingly as the one sanctioned splash of colour. Clean humanist neo-grotesque type argues the legibility principle against the genre’s techy noise.
Slipstream realised — the kinetic mark riding the expertise cluster
On the flagship the board’s metaphor became a WebGL curl-noise particle-trail field: glowing brand-coloured particles rake down the axis of the svp. descender, with scroll velocity as the throttle — faster scroll, longer warp trails. The brand’s central idea expressed as motion.
Two websites for two jobs — ship fast, then ship beautiful
The pilot solved speed: a no-code Tilda build, SEO-first from day one (title, meta, Open Graph, canonical, indexable) so the new domain was immediately findable while the flagship was designed — 'Artificial Intelligence meets business.'
Pilot — fast and findable
Flagship — Approach over the particle field
The custom flagship turns the brand into an experience: scroll-driven storytelling over the page-wide Slipstream field, quad-lingual EN/FR/NL/DE with per-locale SEO heads, hreflang and JSON-LD, WCAG 2.2 AA with reduced-motion fallbacks, and a React + Vite / Express + Postgres build with hardened security and a GDPR-compliant contact flow that persists consent. Design and art direction by me, built with an AI coding assistant.
Responsive flagship at 390px
Live — the flagship in production at svp-consulting.ai
Fully shipped — the flagship now runs svp-consulting.ai, end to end by one designer
Two sites shipped for two jobs, and the arc is closed — the pilot made the new domain findable within days, then handed svp-consulting.ai to the custom WebGL flagship that now runs it in production, quad-lingual and WCAG 2.2 AA. The positioning is verified and defensible in a real sales conversation, and the highest-ICE growth bet (the embedded-engineer model) is the literal expression of the brand mission — strategy and brand pointing at the same thing.
The strongest signal the positioning is real: the brand promise and the prioritised business bet are the same move
Sources
- Gartner (2024). 30% of generative-AI projects will be abandoned after proof of concept by end of 2025. — analyst forecast, not peer-reviewed
