Pre-mortem: to save your brand’s life; imagine its demise
The concept of a ‘pre-mortem’ is one borrowed from other industries that carefully manage tight projects, whereby a team of decision makers imagine the demise of the organisation from a variety of different threats, such as: it becomes irrelevant due to a crowded marketplace; competitors find ways to make it cheaper or better; Customers lose interest in the marketplace.
The list is endless, but the outcome is the same – the organisation becomes irrelevant and perishes.
Building brands for the smart cities market
As residents of the beautiful Baltic coastal city of Tallinn in Estonia, we’re utterly enamoured with living in such an advanced location, almost everything is digitised and accessible from your phone or laptop!
So when a client came along to ask us to rebrand their company to focus on the smart city market, we jumped at the chance.
But what does the smart cities market look like and how do you brand them?
Retainer packages
We’re delighted to share the news that we’re launching our own retainer packages to aid companies to improve their visual presence, (online and in print).
The retainer service is perfect for organisations who need to produce marketing materials on a regular basis every month, but don’t want the burden of hiring full-time graphic designers, creatives strategists and a big marketing team.
Start-up series: Why you need a vector logo
The differences between vector and raster logos are quite basic, yet often misunderstood. Knowing the differences and limitations between the two takes minutes, yet can save businesses thousands in lost revenue if the wrong version is used.
Start-up series: Why you need a logo with an alpha channel
Getting it right, will attract your customers because they can instantly tell your market, your size, your price point and a whole load of other critical information that you may want to transmit to them to bring them in.
Getting it wrong will deter them and send them somewhere else where their need can be more easily met – instead of them utilising time in the event that you’re not able to solve their problem.
Brand Design: Bobsleigh Baird
Discover how we designed the branding for rising bobsleigh athlete, Adam Baird. With his impressive athletic background and achievements, we worked closely with Adam to create a brand that reflects his dedication and passion for the sport. Learn about our design process and how we brought Adam's vision to life with a unique and memorable brand identity.
Brand Design: Corpus clothing
We were delighted to work with the team behind Corpus clothing, as we branded the company to align with their journey into the unknown.
George, the founder, has always had a strong passion for the paranormal and spiritual realm, which began with a love for zombie films and watching ghost adventures. After serving in the British army for six years, George struggled to find what he really wanted to do and found inspiration in the idea of starting a clothing brand. He realised there were no clothing brands that represented his love for the paranormal and decided to use his brand to raise funds and awareness for mental health challenges, a cause close to his heart.
Brand Design: Commando Sundials
Discover how we refreshed the Commando Sundials brand to reflect founder Adam's journey and passion for watches after leaving the military. Learn how the team captured the essence of Adam's military experience while conveying the idea of how watches can be a useful tool to interpret and understand the world.
Start-up series: Be clear with your logo’s messaging
It does mean the decision maker can be caught between conflicting advice and wind up trying to cram too much into a logo, creating confusion in the viewer. Ultimately, it unintentionally nudges them into not finding out more about the brand and losing sales.
Metaphors in branding: how literal does your company’s name and logo need to be?
A conversation we often get into is how literal does your company’s branding need to be?
By this, if your company sells wood chips, should you call it ‘the wood chip company’, or call it something even more abstract.
Let’s discuss..
What is cognitive dissonance and why your brand directors should take it seriously
Cognitive Dissonance is a central theory in social psychology that describes a state of flux in a person when they see, hear or read something that conflicts with their belief about the world and the way it works. You could also read it as confusion – however it’s not a good thing for your business.
Does the creative sector have an intelligence deficit?
Yet we wonder how agencies that have only ever focused on creativity as a skill can apply it to the sciences – since they’ve never discussed highly theoretical concepts such as the world of sub-atomic particles, organic chemistry (…yikes), RNA or the laws of thermodynamics (just don’t get us started on entropy, please…).
So how then, are they able to find the correct brand space or personality for a tech company who have a USP in one of these abstract ideas that the agency leaders have never even heard of – let along been challenged to turn into a visual metaphor?