Start. Scale. Succeed.
ICSS, short for Inspire, Create, Start, Scale, is a modular entrepreneurship framework that helps Nigerians move from an idea to a business that lasts. It’s run by SMEDAN, backed by GIZ-SEDIN, and delivered with GOPA and Kaduna Business School.
We came in on two fronts: facilitating the design thinking that sharpened how the programme runs, and building the brand that makes it legible. One system that holds from a policy room to a market stall.
How we worked
We ran the Double Diamond end to end, from Discover to Deliver, through structured workshops built on empathy and stakeholder mapping, problem framing, and programme prototyping. Design thinking did the heavy lifting before a single asset was drawn.
The session did more than frame a brand. It brought real clarity to how the programme now runs: the sequence, the modules, and the journey a founder actually moves through. Design thinking is what kept that clarity honest.
In the room
Founders, trainers, officials and partners, working through the same canvases in the same room. These are the sessions the identity came out of.
The identity
A paper-plane glyph carrying a three-point star for Start, Scale, Succeed, with a colour system of primary, secondary and accent shades, built to hold from a policy deck to a market stall.
The mark
The palette
The pixel pattern
The visual language
The glyph is built from a simple geometry, and everything grows from it: a type system in Spline Sans and Geist, and a family of visual devices drawn from the mark itself.
Collaboration, in pattern.
Illustration
One scene per module. A founder on the couch with an idea, one packing boxes, one opening the shop, one reading the numbers. Simple enough to read at a glance, specific enough to feel like someone you know.
Inspired.
On social
The brand comes alive in social: pixel patterns framing real people, illustrations that breathe, and a message that moves from inspire to scale.
In print, on screen
The system carries into print and product: the Entrepreneurial Report, the Trainers’ Guideline, the Alumni Spotlight, and the module cards founders meet on their phones.
Brand expressions
From billboards and social to merch and print, one visual language that stays recognisable wherever it shows up.
Impact
SMEDAN is embedding ICSS into the National MSME Policy as the national entrepreneurship framework. As of the 2026 national launch, SMEDAN reports:
Figures are SMEDAN-reported, as of the 2026 national launch, and are not an independent evaluation.
Open resources · free
Credits
