When Massimo Portincaso became Boston Consulting Group’s global head of marketing in 2005, the firm’s brand identity was seriously broken. Different colors, different typography, and different logos in ran riot in different regions. “The brand was present in 40 countries and it was complete anarchy,” he says.

After a decade of fine tuning, the prestigious management consulting firm finally looked the same in Japan as it does the U.S. Now it was time, Portincaso determined, to rachet up the brand look to a new level, particularly as competing professional services firms sought to portray themselves as more than just spreadsheet-driven number crunchers.

“I wanted to have a strong visual language shaping the brand, one that engages people and makes them think,” he says.

CarboneSmolan, the company’s long-time design partner, suggested using parametric art as a way of jump-starting a conversation about BCG’s willingness to embrace the right brain in its business as well as leaning on the left brain to provide the services that a professional consulting firm typically delivers.

Parametric art is a marriage of science and art. It typically involves translating a set of variables into a visual output using algorithms and computer code. In the case of BCG, the variables already existed in the descriptions of the 40 practice areas central to the company’s business.

These are things like retail, manufacturing, energy, and consumer products–essentially little businesses within the company–each of which is described in a short statement. CarboneSmolan proposed crunching each of those descriptions into 75 words and then running them through an algorithm that generated a piece of art based on the letters in the text.

In the parametric software, letters are mapped in order across a three dimensional space. The designer manipulates some 400 dials and knobs to find just the right composition of color, composition, and structure. Finally, the designers add lighting effects for extra depth and interest, essentially taking a photo of a key moment of the reaction.