Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct
Client: Wits University
Period: 2016-2017
Technology
Multi-stakeholder partnerships
Education & knowledge
01 — The sneak-peek
An identity coded for growth
Tshimologong — Setswana for "new beginnings" — is Johannesburg's digital innovation precinct, established by Wits University with government and business. BBA Liminal built its identity and visual language: a modular, code-based system, growing from the kudu horn of the Wits mark, made to iterate as endlessly as the precinct intends to grow.
02 — The liminal moment
Tshimologong — Setswana for "new beginnings" — is Johannesburg's newest high-tech address, in the vibrant inner-city district of Braamfontein, overlooking Wits. It incubates start-ups, commercialises research, and builds high-level digital skills for students, professionals and unemployed youth. To establish the Digital Innovation Precinct, the University of the Witwatersrand partnered with government, business and industry.
BBA Liminal was asked to create a corporate identity and visual language for the precinct — one that paid subtle homage to the Wits brand without the formality of a university. The brief was an identity. The deeper task was growth: a precinct setting out to become an African Silicon Valley needed a mark that could begin again and again, carrying "new beginnings" in its DNA as the place itself expanded.
03 — The transformation
New beginnings, drawn from Wits. We took the kudu horn from the Wits logo as our starting point and reimagined it as a continuously moving pixel motif — a subtle homage to the university, freed of the formality a tertiary institution usually carries, and a fitting image for a place of new beginnings.
A logo written in code. We gave the identity a modular look and feel based on the language of code, housing the logo in modular units and binary — every element relating to what the precinct stands for, and built to generate an infinite number of iterations.
An identity built to grow. Growth is written into the system itself. As the precinct expands toward its vision of an African Silicon Valley, the visual language grows with it — never fixed, always able to begin again.
04 — The craft
A mark that never stops beginning
A pixel motif drawn from the Wits kudu horn, a modular logo built on the language of code and binary, and a visual system made to iterate endlessly — an identity for a precinct intent on becoming an African Silicon Valley.
05 — The validation of purpose
“Wits and Tshimologong are the pioneers driving Gauteng to a modern economy in the new age of the digital revolution…”
— Premier David Makhura, Gauteng Province
159+ start-ups incubated since 2017
231+ entrepreneurs supported since 2017
54 jobs created in 2021
Brand & communications strategy
Typography
Brand identity design
Positioning & narrative
