Category: Website Design

Legastat brand development project for a London based legal services provider.

The project was to totally redesign their logo and corporate identity.  The old identity had not been refreshed since the 1960s and didn’t reflect their new digital services.  Legastat are well known and well regarded within the legal professional and are considered one of the countries leading litigation support companies. They have an iconic building in the heart of Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn Fields which everybody within the legal sector is aware of.  The danger was, people might confuse ‘iconic’ with out-of-date so we began a process of exploring their logo and their visual identity. We felt it was important to experiment with a few ideas, each moving further away from the existing brand identity. This enabled us to discover what was crucial about how Legastat currently present themselves and what elements need to be retained.

Website design for Legastat. To view site click here >

The new Legastat brand development moves the business into a new digital age.  The supporting symbol combines the fundamental historical basis of their business, reprographics, with a new twist suggesting new technology based services such as digital archiving. The overarching proposition is demonstrate Legastat specialise in all aspect of legal documentation.

As green is such a dominant colour in the history and understanding of the business we have chosen to launch the new identity using  similar, but richer green.  Once established, this strong colour will be supported by a varied colour pallet to enable Legastat to use more variety in their promotional material.

A bold substantial font carries a sense of authority.  The most important aspect of the identity is the name and clients positive relation to it. Their clients know Legastat and need to be able to identify them quickly and easily.  The bold font also allows us to add colour to the letterforms adding an interesting new dimension. We also added the descriptor line ‘Expert Litigation Support‘ to help communicate the service to new business.

The new brand identity was launched in Spring 19.  If you have a similar project and need to work through ideas to establish a new brand identity, then get in touch and I’ll happily discuss in more detail the process behind the Legastat brand development.

Maly IT are a software development company based in Suffolk. They develop tailored software building bespoke solutions specialising on high end workflow management and quality assurance.  This has enabled them to establish themselves as a leading provider to business sectors that require bespoke software capable of handing their regulatory and compliance needs.

As a software development company Maly IT find themselves in a sector saturated with solution providers. These companies will often find themselves being quite abstract in how they present themselves as they are often offering solutions which have to tangible, visual representation. In order to help Maly IT stand out from the crowd, we developed a bold dynamic design. The logo is strong and simple highlighting the efficiency of their software, with a nod to the coding aspect implying their ability to build tailored software which is not just ‘out-of-the-box’.

The shapes which contain the logo appears in different forms across all marketing material helping to emphasise the bespoke offering. The use of this ever changing form helps give the design a distinctive feel and lessen the need to show sector specific imagery. This give Maly IT the ability to tailor their marketing as they do their software to maximise the impact to prospective clients.

The choice of colours pallet is designed to be a sympathetic to the regulatory sectors in pharmaceuticals, education, health and energy. The use of the dark and light shades allows the logo to be as effective in solid colour as is on a white background. These colours now form the basis for additions to the marketing material such as clothing and a new describer presentation as seen on their homepage.

If you are a software development company or similar business that needs to stand out then, drop me an email and we can discuss this projects and others and I’m sure I can offer a similar simple, but dynamic solution.

Care Development East are an independent, non-profit making, organisation focused on promoting excellence across the social care and health workforce in the east of England. They provide impartial advice, support, guidance and information to many businesses and individuals in the care sector.

Previously The Suffolk Brokerage, their logo centred around the Orwell Bridge. This is something they were keen to retain in the new brand because their service users all recognised the bridge and its place in the Suffolk countryside. We developed various stylised versions of the bridge and open this up to discussion both from with the organisation and a selected number of service users. It was decided the simple curved illustration with the iconic double ‘legs’ best represented the idea.

Once we had developed the logo, the visual identity was rolled out over all their material, including a new website, newsletters and social media. The simple bridge illustration was very much designed with the newsletters and social media in mind. With a long organisation name, it was important the bridge logo be able to be identifiable in isolation, leaving the name to rendered from the social media page name.

The purple colour was heavily used in the original Suffolk Brokerage visual identity and for this reason we decided to retain it for the new Care Development East brand. Alongside this, we introduced a new green to provide a contrasting highlight. Using these colours in combination really helped with services users being able to quickly identify Care Development East and their information.

The Care Development East website was developed in WordPress giving them and their communication team total control over all content. We sourced and implemented various plug-ins to make updating the site as easy as possible and add functionality. The Training Exchange provides a dynamic list of training opportunities via a simple to use interface. The Training Provider section provides a list of all providers in the Eastern region offering RQF courses for the care sector.

As one of the main roles of Care Development East is the dissemination of information, we also set up a MailChimp account and a series of templates which allow them to send up-t0-date information to their database.

Please get in touch if you would like to discuss this, or any other projects with relevance to logo and brand design.

Hector Fox is a sub brand designed for an interior design studio based within TWP Designs. (brand identity project can be found here >). They currently have a good industry reputation within the sector for their work within the restaurant and hotel sector as property refurbishment specialists. However, as a property refurbishment company they were often being overlooked by businesses looking for a design led approach.  By this we mean those who wanted to employ an interior design studio to head the project. Traditionally an interior design studio would submit designs and concepts, with the property refurbishment entering to process much further on. The property refurbishment specialists would then take these concepts and implement them.

TWP have an excellent in-house design team producing high end creative concepts for many of their clients. In order to promote these services we felt the best way was to re-brand this area as a stand alone interior design studio. This would allow the team to have fun with the new brand and produce more experimental marketing material aimed at the design side of the sector. This would leave the traditional marketing activity and the main brand untouched.

For the new brand we produced a new logo and corporate stationery along with a new website and social media graphics. This was a quick and simple way to approach the market and test the viability of setting up a completely new interior design studio.

Do you have a similar problem in that your brand is associated with a particular sector? Is this inhibiting any growth into new areas due to people not understand your service? Perhaps you too need to consider a sub-brand to promote and area of the business you want to grow without damaging your overall brand. Get in touch and we could discuss how we approached this Hector Fox project and how a similar approach could help you.

Trafalgar Fireworks Logo Design for their new flagship superstore in central Norwich.

Trafalgar Fireworks are new firework shop in the heart of Norwich. The owner of the business has a long history with the import and sale of fireworks for the trade, but Trafalgar fireworks are new retail start up business.  As part of an this project we have also completed an ecommerce website (see the case study here>) and a complete range of packaging designs (see the case study here>).

The Trafalgar Fireworks logo design focuses on the red, white and blue of the union jack as the battle of Trafalgar is celebrated as a great British victory It also links to Lord Nelson’s association with Norfolk and the stores location in Trafalgar Street. The classic silhouette of the warship is used within the logo to replace the ‘A’ to give the logo a unique form and keep the design compact. The solid vector approach is designed to convey authority and help move the visual identity way from other import brands which have a very flamboyant Chinese interpretation of western design tastes.

We also developed a supporting graphic to use alongside the Trafalgar Fireworks logo based on Nelson’s famous Breast Star seen in may of his portraits. This can be seen on the store front below.

Trafalgar Fireworks Logo Design Variations

Examples below show how the Trafalgar Fireworks logo design is used in different colourways. In allowing the logo to be used with a blue and red background the brand material retains a strong identity while introducing some flexibility in how the logo is displayed. Variations of the logo can also be used with just the ship icon.

Care was taken to paint the Trafalgar Street store the same blue as the logo helping with the overall visual identity.  All the supporting brand material and promotional activity continues this scheme.

Research after the first year’s trading revealed Trafalgar customers clearly identity the brand in press and online adverting. They also perceive the brand as a UK company who understand their market and not just a firework importer. This has been very important as Trafalgar Fireworks have worked hard to demonstrate they really understand the market and offer valuable advice. We are now working on new ideas to build on their reputation as Norfolk’s premier firework provider.

If you have a retail business or are thinking of starting one, then I can help with all your logo, visual identity and brand designs. If you want to discuss the process with me and how we go about starting such a project, please get in touch and I’ll be happy to help.

Insurance broker logo design for local Suffolk business Liability and General. 

Liability and General were a start up business looking to partner with an experienced local graphic designer to provide them with designs and advice.

The logo was designed to be used in positive and negative.  This gave Liability and General the opportunity to use a strong blue brand colour while also being able to use the logo on a white background.  The typeface choice gives the logo a crisp, precise feel. We developed two versions of the logo with the copy in a single or double line to allow for different applications.

Between us, we looked at various international, national and local insurance companies to examine where Liability and General fitted. What we felt worked best was a strong, identifiable icon that positioned the company very much central to the sector.  The shape plays with the L and G of the name to form a simple but effective symbol.  This symbol is designed to look traditional at part of the clinical look favoured by many of the large insurance brands. This gave Liability and General instant acceptance as an established business. The symbol can then be used in isolation on social media profiles.

The shape also allowed us to explore sub-brands such as Onsite, a specific campaign aimed at the building trade. The Onsite brand takes the visual style of Liability and General insurance broker logo design and tweaks it for a specific audience. This included sales leaflets and its own mini-site.

Alongside the insurance broker logo design we produced a distinctive brand style using children in adult trades. This gave the Liability and General promotional sales material a fun twist which allowed them to stand out in a very competitive market.

This video was designed to promote their specialism within the construction sector. It incorporates an animation of their logo which helps bring the brand to life. For more detail on the video production project, click here.

Insurance broker logo design

Are you starting up a business looking for help or a company after an insurance broker logo design?  Get in touch and I can help with your logo design, brand identity and a raft of other services. I’ve helped many start up businesses over the years and have seen many of them go on to do great things.

Identity Design Case Study: Care Careers Suffolk

Care Careers Suffolk are a not for profit organisation that provide advice and guidance for those wanting a career in the care sector.  Their team travel Suffolk attending events such as school and college open days offering face to face contact for anyone interesting in a career in care.  This can be by providing examples of career pathways and how to gain relevant qualifications through schemes such as apprenticeships.

It was important that Care Careers Suffolk had a bold identity to help them make an impact at events. We also decided it would be great to make the identity design as colourful as possible to show potential carers this is a colourful and exciting sector.

The logo was uses a bold typeface allowing plenty of colour to be added. This colour is constructed by using number of overlapping stars in various tints of purple, orange and blue.  These stars build to give the logo texture and help convey the busy nature of the sector.  What we were very keen to do is communicate how diverse and exciting a care in career could be and overcome any negative connotations about the care sector.  In using the stars we are subtly implying care professionals are the hidden stars of our society, something we have used in other aspects of the identity design.

The identity design has been used on a number of items such as leaflets as well as the Care Careers Website and social media platforms. I have also helped Care Careers Suffolk use the identity to set up their own Vimeo channel allowing them to publish helpful testimonials from care professionals.

If you would like to discuss how I can can help with your identity design project, then please contact me and I’ll be happy to discuss ideas.