A law firm brand, set by a strategy
Erico Carvalho argues cases before Brazil's highest courts, and his old site looked like any firm's. I took him from research to positioning, a new identity, a full brand kit and a new site, designed and built end to end.
One page, in the order the firm works.
Superior Courts first, complex disputes second, arbitration as the layer between them. Then the lawyer, his writing and a way to reach him.
The old site said the right thing. It just didn't look it.
I wrote it down before drawing anything: what to keep, what to fix.
Keep
- The domainerico.law
- The taglineSuperior Courts first, arbitration last
- Bilingual intent
- A focused practice
Fix
- No identityIt could be any lawyer, anywhere
- Erico was invisible
- No proofNo cases, courts or record
- No audience
- No system beyond the website
Strategy first. Every design decision traces back to it.
Before any pixels: the market, the competitors, the old site and the lawyer himself. Four findings set the brand.
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A specialist in Brazil's hardest courts. I tested the research with Erico and sharpened the positioning with him: strategic litigation before the STF and the STJ, plus a space almost nobody in Brazil claims, the court phase of arbitration, when an award is challenged, enforced or defended. That positioning gave the site its order and the brand its seriousness.
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Every law firm owns a gavel. Scales of justice, courthouse steps, stock marble: the research found the same props across the category, from boutiques to the largest firms. The brief ruled them out. There is no legal prop anywhere in Erico's identity.
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Brasília is the advantage. The courts he argues before sit in the capital, in buildings Niemeyer designed. Almost no Brazilian firm uses the city. Erico's brand does: concrete white, a deep blue and a deep green, Niemeyer's own palette, and the architecture as its photography.
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In a solo practice, the lawyer is the firm. Clients hire Erico, not a roster. The new site gives him a profile of his own: his portrait, his record, his publications. The old site didn't show him at all.
“O que me diferencia é dominar o jogo nos tribunais mais difíceis do país, com autonomia e comprometimento integral com cada causa.”
“What sets me apart is knowing how to play in the country's hardest courts, independently, and fully committed to every case.”
Erico Carvalho, in the strategy brief
Sparks, clovers, arcs, blocks. Then one mark.
I sketched the symbol wide open before narrowing it to five finalists. The one that won reads two ways in a single stroke: the E of Erico, and Brasília's pilot plan seen from above.
The five finalists. The first became the mark.
“Pessoa e lugar no mesmo gesto.”
“Person and place in the same gesture.” The initial of Erico and the plan of the city he argues in, drawn as one line.
Erico brand manual, Concept
Concrete, deep blue, and a dry gold.
Syne for display type, because it's architectural and geometric. Inter for reading. Sharp corners and a 4px spacing base. The dark mode reverses the palette and softens the blue, and it's all one set of tokens.
Justiça
Resolução de disputas complexas
Controvérsias empresariais
Condução de recursos especiais e de processos originários em disputas contratuais e societárias de alta complexidade.
Superior Tribunal de Justiça
Rendered live from the tokens in the Erico Law library in Figma. Switch the theme to see the dark palette.
One mark, twenty ways.
A symbol and its outline, a wordmark, and two signatures that join them. Four colours each. Every variant ships as SVG, PNG and PDF, which comes to 60 files, so nobody at the firm ever has to screenshot a logo.
The real files from the brand kit, recoloured here by CSS the way the kit's four colourways are.
Everything that crosses the table.
The old site had no system behind it. This one reaches every place a client meets the firm: across a desk, in an inbox, on a screen in a meeting room.
- Brand manualPDF, and a web version
- Logo system20 variants, 60 files
- Business cardFront and back, print-ready
- LetterheadTwo models, editable in Word
- PresentationA 14-slide template and a deck, PowerPoint
- DigitalLinkedIn cover, email signature
- FontsSyne and Inter, packaged
- Download pageEvery file behind one link
Rendered from the delivered files.
Everything shipped in ten days.
The brief, the manual, the kit and the site all went out between 2 and 11 June 2026. The site is live.
erico.law ↗What I'd do differently
- Interview the client before the desk research.My first brief was built from the outside: the market, the competitors, the old site. One conversation with Erico moved its centre from arbitration to the Superior Courts. Next time the interview comes first and the research tests it.
- Capture the before on day one.I never saved the old erico.law. Once the new site went live the old one was gone, and the web archive doesn't have it either.