Calamos Asset Management

Calamos Investments Brand Identity Naperville, Illinois When John Calamos Sr. transformed $5,000 of his parents’ grocery store savings into their retirement nest egg, Calamos Investments was born. Along the way he pioneered convertible bond investment strategies while advocating that the key to building wealth is managing risk in down markets. After C&G Partners appeared on the CBS Sunday Morning Show during a segment about the creation of logos, John Calamos Sr. commissioned the firm to craft a new tagline and design a new brand identity for Calamos Investments. The initiative coincided with the company’s 30th anniversary and was intended to better reflect the remarkable success of the business. Additionally, a unified visual identity would allow all things Calamos to be linked by a single master brand that could acquire meaning independent of the company’s founder, an objective that reflected the company’s plans for growth. Since the Calamos name is unique, a wordmark was chosen that employs modern letterforms in their utmost simplicity so that they read as abstract symbols yet remain legible as type. Silver, with its metallic sheen, reflects the performance aspect of the business, as well as its monetary rewards. To express the role of information technology in shaping investment decisions, photographs are overlaid with linear patterns drawn from data visualization. Their application reinforces the metaphoric role played by the imagery, while suggesting the deep research the company relies on in order to deliver superior results on a global scale.