Brands are important for everyone. In a world of seemingly endless choices, brands help us to make decisions. A brand is a visual shorthand that reminds us of what an organisation stands for and what they offer to the world. And over time, as we experience how an organisation thinks, acts and speaks, we develop an opinion of it, which we are reminded of whenever we see their brand. The key to building a successful brand is ruthless consistency. The AA never use any colour but yellow and Boots never use anything but their cursive italic font in their logo.
Consistency is king - variation dilutes. Our brand personality is built and reinforced over time, based on what we say and do and the value that we bring - and how consistently we use our brand. Our brand is more than our logo. It’s a visual identity system, which includes our logo, fonts, colours and ways of communicating.
Beyond working within brand guidelines, I have experience in brand creation and development. Below are examples from three arts-based organisations I have worked with to build and document their brand.
Rugby Art Gallery & Museum
I guided the team at Rugby Art Gallery & Museum through a complete brand refresh.
When I first started working with this modern community facility in Rugby, the branding felt anything but modern. And their brand relied heavily on an illustration of the building itself - not the benefits it brought to the people of Rugby.
I took the team through a consultation process to nail down how they wanted to be perceived and their overall value proposition.
Having identified the personality attributes they wished to be known for, I designed their logo and built up a complete identity system. Due to time constraints, I commissioned an external designer to formalise the system in a brand guidelines document. With me doing the strategy and identity development myself, the total cost to the Gallery was less than £1,000.
It was then time to roll out the new identity system across all customer touch points and promotional activity. This included a redesign of the website (which I built myself), social media, email newsletter and signage within the building. I did all the design work for the following examples...
Rugby Art Gallery & Museum displaying the new branding in the upper windows
HTML Newsletter
Redesigned website
Social media post
Northants & Rutland Open Studios
Northants & Rutland Open Studios is an umbrella organisation supporting hundreds of artists. The artists promote their work using the Northants & Rutland Open Studios brand so it is crucial they do this consistently. I created the brand guidelines document so that artists would understand the identity system and use it correctly. Beyond logo font and colours the guide contains templated examples of typical communications.
Arts Uplift
Arts Uplift is a community interest company that aims to enhance the physical and mental wellbeing of people whose lives would benefit from an uplift. They do this by engaging community members with the healing powers of the arts and connection to local heritage. Arts Uplift relies heavily on interns to help with marketing and administration and therefore the challenge was to document branding guidelines in a simple and easy to follow way so that all future communication, both digital and print carries a very obvious house-style. Below are some of the templated examples of work I created.
