Case study · 2024 — present

Branding, website and digital strategy for the only 3PL exclusively dedicated to moving stone.

First Class Freight is a third-party logistics company built around one specialty — the safe, on-time transportation of granite slabs, marble and other stone materials. We were brought on to build the brand from the ground up: identity, website, social presence, and an always-on digital campaign engine, all pointed at two audiences at once — the flatbed carriers FCF wants in its network, and the suppliers shipping stone.

Client

First Class Freight

Sector

3PL · Stone-materials logistics

Scope

Brand · Web · Social · Ads

Chicago, IL

FIRST CLASS FREIGHT

Accurate · Efficient · Secure

01 · The brief

Build the brand for the only logistics provider that moves nothing but stone — and the lead engine to fill its trucks.

Stone is one of the hardest things in freight to move well. A single granite slab can weigh over 1,000 pounds. It has to ride on a flatbed, secured by a driver who has hauled it before, and arrive without a chip — because a chip is the whole order. Most general brokers will quote that load. Almost none of them specialise.

First Class Freight saw the gap. The brief to us was equally specific: stand them up as the recognised stone-materials 3PL — a brand granite distributors trust on first contact and flatbed owner-operators sign up to drive for — and build the lead-generation surfaces (website, social, paid) to back the positioning up.

“We don’t just move stone — we move businesses forward.”

— Brand positioning, FCF

02 · Goals

Make FCF the obvious choice for the people who move stone — and the people who ship it.

Own the niche

Position FCF as the default 3PL the moment someone in the stone industry searches for freight — by category, not by company name.

Recruit carriers first

The first 60 days of marketing target flatbed carriers with 10+ trucks. The network has to exist before the lead generation does.

Generate shipper leads

A clean inquiry path for granite distributors, fabricators, and importers — fast response, no friction, no jargon.

Look like the safe pick

Every surface — site, LinkedIn, ads — has to read as the careful, professional partner you trust with a $20k slab.

03 · What we shipped

Nine deliverables — one connected programme.

Brand identity

The FCF stencil wordmark, the rock & road graphic vocabulary, the navy + electric-blue + stone-white palette and a mini style guide team-wide.

Logo system

Primary FCF mark with three colour applications — knockout on navy, blue on light, mono on photography — plus the full lockup with descender.

Typography pairing

Godber as the technical display face for headlines, paired with Inter for UI and body. One serif-free system, top to bottom.

MVP website

Five-to-seven page site with a Carrier Application form (FMCSA Safer verification) and a Shipper Inquiry form (Excel + Zapier).

Social profile kit

Company and CEO LinkedIn set-ups, Instagram & Facebook covers, profile imagery — consistent identity across five accounts.

Content templates

A ten-template social system covering recruitment posts, quotes, CEO carousels, and visual story openers — production-ready in Canva.

Paid-media programme

Google Search, Display and YouTube ads scoped to carrier recruitment first, retargeting shippers from week six onward.

Email + business cards

Standardised email signatures and print-ready business-card templates for the whole team.

Phase roadmap

Twelve weeks mapped from brand finalisation through to ad-campaign scaling — every deliverable owned, every dependency dated.

04 · The mark

Three letters, one module. A wordmark you can read from a smartboard or a side-view mirror.

The wordmark is a stencil — three letters built from a single rectangular module, the negative space between strokes doing as much work as the strokes themselves. “F · C · F” reads the company name out the moment your eye lands on it, and the two centre breaks accent in electric blue against a navy wash.

Primary · Knockout · Blue accent

01 / 01 · Primary

05 · Palette

A finance navy. A logistics blue. The white of cut stone.

Two blues do all the heavy lifting — a confidence-building deep navy as the surface, and an electric mid-blue as the accent that lights up the wordmark and the CTAs. No greens, no warm tones — this is a category that earns its trust by looking calm.

Surface · trust

Navy Hold

#15213A

Accent · CTA

Electric Blue

#185AD5

Type · contrast

Asphalt

#1A1A1A

Surface · light

Slab Stone

#E7EBEA

Secondary · meta

Quarry Gray

#8A8F95

Background · clean

Paper

#FFFFFF

06 · Logo system

One mark, three voices.

The wordmark is built to flex without ever stopping being itself: a knockout on the navy hero plate, the same shape painted blue on a stone-white plate for B2B documents, and a mono lock-up for letterheads, emails, and the corner of a LinkedIn cover.

FIRST CLASS FREIGHT

A · Primary · Navy plate

FIRST CLASS FREIGHT

B · Light · Blue on stone

FIRST CLASS FREIGHT

C · Mono · Over imagery

07 · Typography

Godber for the brand. Inter for everything else.

Godber is a geometric display face cut from rounded rectangles — almost the same module the wordmark is built from. It does the headlines, the campaign quotes, the section openers. Inter handles UI, body, captions and forms.

Display · Godber

ABCDEFGHIJKLMN
OPQRSTUVWXYZ
0123456789 · & ?

Used for: H1 · campaign quotes · the wordmark · numerals.
Weight: Regular (single weight).
Tracking: 0 for body, +0.18em for caps.

Body · Inter

Bold · 700 for emphasis
Semibold · 600 for labels and CTAs
Regular · 400 for body and forms

Used for: H2–H6 · body · UI labels · forms · captions.
Variable; ships in three working weights.

Scale · 5 steps

H1 · 64