Identity, bilingual EN/FR site, Sanity CMS, and a B2B portal for an industrial maintenance shop with 20+ years on the floor.
Overview
An independent industrial maintenance shop in Quebec: 20+ years repairing CNC machines, hydraulics, electrical, and pneumatic systems for manufacturers. The work is technical, the trust is everything, the digital presence was zero. The job was a brand and product surface that lets a plant manager hire AVI before they call the OEM.
The brief
Industrial buyers don't read marketing. They read certifications, response times, and equipment lists. The brand had to feel like a working shop, not a startup, while still being legible to a procurement officer scanning at 11pm before a downtime call.
Approach
Identity built around the language of the shop floor: Graphite, Steel, and a Signal Green that pulls the eye to the action (book a call, request a quote, view inventory). Bilingual EN/FR Next.js site with eight services architected as their own pages, plus a public inventory feature backed by Sanity CMS, plus a private dashboard / login flow for clients tracking active service tickets.
Outcome
AVI now ships service inventory updates without me. The Sanity studio is the daily tool: shop manager edits inventory, marketing edits service descriptions, both in EN and FR, no engineering ticket required.
The system
Industrial brands fail one of two ways: too pretty (looks like a startup pretending to know machines) or too crude (looks like a 2008 directory listing). The system splits the difference. Workshop typography, machine-shop palette, and Signal Green reserved for the actions that matter.
Typography
Type that survives a phone screen on a noisy plant floor and a procurement PDF on a 27-inch monitor. Display weight tight enough to feel like equipment, body weight loose enough to read 200 words about pneumatic seal replacement without quitting.
Color
Graphite is everything: hero, cards, footers, body copy. Signal Green appears only on what the visitor needs to click: book a service, request a quote, see inventory. That restraint is what keeps the brand legible at the moment the visitor is already stressed.
Layout
Every service gets its own page, indexed by Google individually. The system runs on Sanity for content and a custom dashboard for client tickets. Marketing, service ops, and clients each have their own surface, and none of them need design to ship.
The website
Three surfaces, one system. Marketing pages for SEO and trust. A logged-in dashboard for clients tracking active service tickets. A public inventory feature that the shop edits in Sanity, no developer in the loop.
