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PR designed to show, rather than tell
Client
Black Unicorn PR
Sector
PR Agency
Black Unicorn was founded by a journalist who could see the gap between journalism and PR from the inside. The brand had to make that gap visible to founders who were tired of being sold placements they didn't need.
Brand Strategy
Visual Identity
Creative Direction
Style Guide
Web Design
Development
Julija and Mauro started Black Unicorn out of a frustration Julija had lived directly. Julija had been a journalist before moving into PR, and the move had shown her something most PR agencies either don't see or don't care to fix. The space between what journalists actually want and what PR agencies tend to deliver is wider than the industry pretends. Press releases land in inboxes already deleted. Pitches arrive without stories. Founders pay for placements that don't build anything beyond a screenshot for the company Slack.
Black Unicorn was the answer to that frustration. An agency built by someone who understood both sides of the relationship, working with founders who needed something more substantial than coverage. Mauro brought the operational and commercial discipline. Julija brought the editorial instinct and the network. Together they built an agency around the idea that great PR is great journalism applied to a brand's story, not a transactional service measured in hits and clicks.
Eight or nine years in, Contour has worked on two pieces of identity work for them. An original identity when the agency was already operating but the brand hadn't caught up. And an evolution four or five years later when the business had moved up-market and the identity needed to reflect that without throwing away the equity it had earned.
The friction at each point was the same friction every Level 2 founder feels. The substance was there. The brand wasn't yet representing it. The work was to close that gap and keep closing it as the business grew.
The PR category has a particular smell. Corporate agencies leaning on enterprise-speak and process diagrams. Boutique tech agencies with too many startups on the homepage and not enough proof they understand any of them. Generalist firms with a "tech practice" run by someone who was on the consumer goods desk last year. Across the board, the same promise. We'll get you in TechCrunch. The placement is the product. The relationship is short.
The lie underneath is that PR is about hits. That if you can name-drop enough publications, you've done the job. Founders who've been burned by this know the truth. A single thoughtful piece in the right outlet, written by a journalist who actually understands the company, does more for the business than ten placements that read as if they were generated by a press-release template.
Black Unicorn was built to be the opposite of the placement-first model. PR as strategic growth over time, not quick wins. Relationships with journalists that compound. Stories built around what's genuinely interesting about a company, not what the founder has been told to say. Workshops and in-house structures for clients who want to build their own capability. Coverage when it earns its place, not for its own sake.
That position needed a brand that could read as serious enough for the journalists Julija was pitching to, founder-friendly enough for the clients she was pitching for, and confident enough to refuse the corporate-PR visual default that everyone else in the category had agreed on.
Development by Laura Ockenden
The Identity
The original brand work happened when Black Unicorn was already running and already winning work. The agency had a name, a reputation, and a clear sense of what it stood for. What it didn't have was an identity that matched the level the founders were operating at.
The brief had room in it. Julija wanted a rainbow palette from the start. The constraint was making sure the unicorn didn't read as generic or obvious. Unicorn is loaded in tech. Every founder pitching to a VC uses the word. A literal unicorn illustration would have landed Black Unicorn in the middle of the same crowd they were trying to stand apart from.
The decision was to build the unicorn out of negative space. Black as the system constraint, a circle as the container, the unicorn formed by what isn't there. The rest of the circle filled with a holographic palette, which carries the rainbow Julija wanted but in a way that reads as material, dimensional and contemporary rather than literal. The mark is conceptually doing what the agency does. It draws the eye to what's absent. The story under the story.
The system was built around that mark. Holographic accents across the brand language. Black as the dominant ground. Type and tone confident, modern, and journalistic rather than corporate.
The identity was trademarked. In the years since, it's had to be defended against attempts at imitation. That's the cleanest test of an ownable mark. People only copy what's working.
Four or five years in, the business had grown. Bigger clients. Bigger placements. A track record that included Bloomberg, Reuters, BBC, Financial Times, TechCrunch, TechChill. A roster across InsurTech, HealthTech, MedTech, VC funds, and a thread of mission-led organisations including 3D-printed synthetic tissue research and women's health work. The agency was operating at a level the original identity could no longer carry.
The strategic call was evolution, not rebuild. The original mark had four or five years of brand equity behind it. Throwing it out would have meant starting again on a foundation that was working. The work was to tighten what was there, not replace it.
Colour was adjusted to lean further into the tech positioning. The system was sharpened. The mark stayed. The brand grew up without losing what had made it recognisable.
That restraint is its own kind of strategic decision. Most agencies use a milestone like moving up-market as an excuse to rebrand from scratch. Black Unicorn didn't need that. The work showed the discipline to keep what was earning its place and only change what wasn't.
The Website
The first site was operational. Services listed. Sectors named. A clear this is what we do shop window for founders looking to find the agency and start a conversation. It did its job for the stage the business was at.
The current site is doing different work. It's structured to prove what the first site only claimed. Case studies showing where Black Unicorn's clients have been featured. Individual publication pages walking through specific placements and the work behind them. A regularly updated and categorised blog that gives the agency a permanent home for thought leadership and gives readers a reason to return. Sector-specific landing pages building expertise visibly across InsurTech, HealthTech, MedTech and beyond.
The structural decision underneath the site is the same decision underneath the original mark. Don't tell. Show. Don't claim expertise. Demonstrate it. A founder visiting the site doesn't have to trust that Black Unicorn can get them into the publications that matter. The evidence is on the page.
The site was rebuilt after the identity evolution, when the existing site started looking out of date next to the new brand. We continue to support and add to it. The blog publishes consistently. The case studies grow. The site is a system that compounds, which is the same logic Black Unicorn applies to the work they do for their own clients.
The work is built to flex across two audiences without contradicting itself. Founders evaluating a PR agency, and the agency's own published thinking aimed at the wider category. Black Unicorn has to look like an agency journalists want to work with, and like an agency founders want to hire. The brand system holds both without compromise.
Mark, palette, type and tone stay constant across pitch decks, social, the website, client decks, and the blog. Holographic accents do the work that colour usually does in a tech brand. Black grounds everything. The voice stays journalistic, generous, and confident without slipping into the placement-promise language the rest of the category uses.
The system has held for nearly a decade because the foundational decisions made early were strong enough to support what the agency became.
Original visual identity. Evolved visual identity. Two website builds. Ongoing website support and content additions. Brand guidelines maintained across the evolution. Trademark protection enforcement support.
The longer view matters here. This isn't a project case study. It's a partnership that has stretched across the full arc of Black Unicorn's growth, from established-but-under-presented through to a recognisable senior player in the tech-PR space.
Black Unicorn is the PR agency a founder hires when they've stopped wanting placements and started wanting growth. Built by a journalist who understood the gap between what journalists need and what PR usually delivers. Working across emerging tech, regulated sectors and mission-led organisations, with the discipline to refuse the quick-win and the network to make the long-term play land.
Julija and Mauro have directly attributed the agency's growth to strong brand positioning. The work isn't the placements they've earned for their clients. It's the relationship and the trajectory the brand makes possible.
