New visual identity of fortell

The year 2025 was exceptional for fortell. We celebrated 30 years since the company was founded. Such an anniversary is always a good moment to pause for a while, look back at everything that has been built, and at the same time say where the company wants to move next.

You may have noticed over the past year that new terms, visuals, and ways of communication have been appearing across the company. The phrase “fresh factory” has come up most often. For some, it may have seemed like just a new slogan. In reality, however, there is a bigger idea behind it.

For more than twenty years, fortell has been working with the external company eBRÁNA, which helps businesses with marketing and communication. Together with their team, we embarked on a project with a clear—and today very important—goal: to define what fortell really is and what makes it different.

The result is a brand manual. It is not a marketing handbook full of complex rules, but rather a guide that helps maintain a consistent communication and visual direction. It describes how we talk about the company, how our materials should look, and how we want to be perceived by employees, customers, and the public. Thanks to this, everything fortell communicates makes more sense and stays consistent.

The brand manual was not created by marketing alone. The goal was to capture fortell as it truly is. That’s why people from different parts of the company came together at one table – CEO Filip Ambrož, HR specialist Hana Šebrlová, Sales Director Radim Šafařík, Production Director Lukáš Moravec, Cost Estimator Iveta Ambrožová, and myself as a Marketing Specialist.

Each brought their own perspective. Some from production, some from sales, others from working with people. Together, we searched for an answer to a simple (yet quite complex) question: What makes fortell fortell?

It was from these discussions that the idea behind the term fresh factory gradually emerged.

While working on the brand manual, we also reflected on what the colors in our logo actually represent.

Green symbolizes freshness – new ideas, the drive to move things forward, and also a human approach: an environment where people know each other and where work has meaning.

Anthracite, on the other hand, reflects what fortell has been built on from the very beginning – manufacturing, technology, and craftsmanship. It also refers to the Czech word fortel, which means skill, expertise, or craftsmanship.

And it is the combination of these two worlds – humanity and honest manufacturing – that gave rise to the concept of the fresh factory.

There is one more interesting detail connected to the company’s name. As we have already explained, the word fortel in Czech means skill and craftsmanship – exactly what every good manufacturing business is built on. But our founders added something more to it.

The two letters “l” at the end are no coincidence. They symbolically refer to Lanškroun and Letohrad – the towns where the company’s founders come from.

So even in the name itself, there remains a trace of the region where fortell was born.

When people hear the word factory, many of them (and I was one of them) imagine grey halls and an anonymous environment. But we know the reality can be different.

Fortell is a manufacturing company, but we also want to show that production can be modern, open, and full of ideas. A factory can be a place where people know each other by name and have the space to bring in new ideas.

That is exactly why the term fresh factory was created. Not just as a description of colors or visuals, but as a way to express what kind of fortell we want to continue building.

Within the company, this idea is reflected in the concept of “my fortell” (meaning “my strength”). Each of us has a strength – something we are good at.

Some have a feel in their hands, some are precise, some quickly come up with technical solutions, and others are able to keep a team together. The goal is to recognize these strengths and give them space.

Because fortell is not built on technology alone. It is built above all on people and their skills.

When communicating with customers, we use the phrase “with fortell”. It is our way of saying that a product or solution has been created with a focus on quality, experience, and honest work.

Fortell does not want to be just a manufacturing capacity. We want to be a partner who thinks about production from the very beginning of a project.

Because we have development, tooling, and production all under one roof, we are able to design solutions that make sense even in real production.

Fresh factory is also a message to the outside world. We want to show that industry is not just about machines, but also about the people behind them.

Fortell is a company from Lanškroun that grew from scratch through the work of five founders, built on experience and collaboration across professions. And that is exactly what we want to present to the public.

Part of the brand manual was also defining the company’s vision and mission. Our vision is to become the freshest factory – not only in our field. It does not mean we are the best. It defines the direction we want to take.

We want to be a company where people enjoy working and producing, maintain a strong reputation in the region, and be a good employer.

The mission then describes how we want to achieve this every day. At fortell, it is based on a simple principle – to do our work honestly, responsibly, and with fortel(l).

The new identity of fortell is not just a graphic or marketing whim. It is an important project in the company’s marketing – defining what fortell has been building for thirty years.

Companies that want to create relevant content, present themselves clearly, and communicate in a consistent way should define their direction, which then naturally flows throughout the entire company environment.

And finally: a fresh factory is not created only in marketing. It is created every day in production, in offices, and in collaboration with customers.

At the end of the day, when we can look at the result and say:
That’s fortell! 🙂