beyond the uniform beyond the uniform

When Justin Nassiri, a Naval Academy graduate and former naval officer, left the Navy, he went looking for help figuring out what came next and found very little. He wasn’t alone. Most service members leave active duty with little insight into the careers open to them. Some leave in a hurry, some stay out of fear of the unknown, and some settle into work that doesn’t fit.

So he started Beyond The Uniform as a side project to fill that gap. It shares the stories of veterans who have made the move, analyzes data to spot career trends and points to the resources that help. Working alongside Justin, I created the identity from the ground up: logo, palette, typography, business cards and stationery, a podcast cover and a site banner, plus concepts for events, social and merchandise.

Justin knew the audience firsthand. The people BTU serves have spent years inside one of the most recognizable identities there is. The brand had to honor that service and still point clearly toward civilian life.

Justin’s brief was clear about what BTU should be: modern and forward thinking, efficient and succinct, trustworthy and humbly patriotic. It was just as clear about what it shouldn’t be: historic and dated, drawn out and hierarchical, sales-y, or zealous. Among the logos he admired, he pointed to USAA.

We boiled those traits down to three, forward thinking, trustworthy and humbly patriotic, and every sketch had to live up to all of them at once, from the mark to the business card.

FORWARD THINKING

Modern and forward thinking. Looking ahead to the next career, never back at the past.

TRUSTWORTHY

Efficient, succinct and trustworthy. Real stories and real data, said plainly and never sales-y.

HUMBLY PATRIOTIC

Proud of the service without being zealous about it. The flag is there, but it doesn’t shout.

The core audience is service members getting ready to leave active duty. The growth audience is veterans already out who settled into a career that doesn’t fit. What ties them together is the next step: one place to learn what’s possible, from people who have already made the move.

Round one explored patriotic and military symbols: flags, shields and a ribbon, with a wordmark that could flex into Beyond The Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. Justin loved the type, liked the ribbon and loved one flag icon and type treatment. A flag facing backwards brought discomfort, though, and every symbol leaned too far to the military side.

What he really wanted was transformation, a military symbol that becomes a civilian one. His ideas included a half uniform, half suit, a compass, a map, a parachute and a periscope, and I pitched Morse code. In round two, I turned the flag’s stripes into Morse code, and we also tried flag ties, camo briefcases and a flag that turns into cuff links. Justin chose the Morse flag with the dot on the i as the final mark. It stood apart from the usual flags and shields, it turned a patriotic symbol into a message, and it spoke the language of military signals while spelling B, T and U. A symbol of service, sending a signal about what comes next. His one hesitation was whether there was enough civilian life and career in it, so the rest of the system carries that side of the story: the podcast, the veteran stories and the career resources.

The palette comes straight from the flag: navy for the dash, warm red for the dots and bars, slate and steel to support them, and a custom cream. Brandon Text, the typeface Justin picked in round one, carries everything people read, and the wordmark ends with a red dot over the i.

The flag travels on its own as an avatar, a favicon and a tone-on-tone Morse pattern, and black-and-white photos of real service members and families leave the color to the brand.

• NAVY
• WARM RED
• SLATE
• CREAM

The paper system keeps the full logo on white and puts the flag to work on the backs, in warm red and navy over the Morse pattern. The same parts cover letterhead, business cards, envelopes, buttons and a coaster.

The podcast cover was one of the first pieces out the door. It pairs the full logo with Justin’s portrait and a simple promise: helping military veterans navigate their civilian careers.

The site banner carries the same promise across the top of beyondtheuniform.io. The homepage, consultation and podcast page concepts show how the system could grow from there.

It’s always fun to see how far a small flag can travel. These concepts take it to events with a pull-up banner and a workshop kit, onto apparel and drinkware, and into a set of social templates for every new episode.