I stumbled across this from 07/08; it’s a nice, brand renewal video from Swisscom, one of the leading brands and a market leader in Switzerland (with more than 60% average share of the market). Swisscom is perceived as one of the most trusted brands by Swiss people and this re-brand was the final step to a major restructuring of the whole Swisscom organisation. “Our concept for Swisscom centres on creating just a cross-platform, dynamic identity. This will form a strong and clearly defined single axis around which every element of the Swisscom organisation can then move”.

It’s an interesting way to demonstrate an overview of the brand-refresh process and goes some way to capturing the amount of work involved. The video speaks for itself but you can see further development here: http://www.movingbrands.com/?category_name=swisscom-work#strategy

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

Fresh and innovative, this is quite special. In creating its own new identity, the MIT Media Lab developed an algorithm that produces a unique logo for every teacher, staff member and student at the school. Three intersecting spotlights can be organized into any of 40,000 shapes with 12 color combinations, and each person can claim and own an individual shape and use it on his or her business card. As Fast Company points out, that’s enough variation to give each new student a fresh logo for the next 25 years. [Ad Freaks].

Great work by The Green Eyl. I love the concept, method, variations and brand application. I also love the customisation and unique brand it creates for each person, it’s a dynamic, evolving brand identity… but honestly, I’m still unsure about those primary colours :/ Watch the 1:11 video and let us know what do you think. See the applications before you make up your mind.

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

The new Exeter Phoenix events brochure has just hit the presses and it’s the result of a lot of hard work and a completely fresh approach. When we started working with Exeter Phoenix a few years back we transformed their ‘DL’ events leaflet into an A5 landscape booklet, giving much more space to the visiting artists and performers therein. Well, this time we’ve gone one better. Not only have we reviewed the entire Exeter Phoenix brand architecture (always an interesting challenge when working with so many passionate, creative people and departments!), but we’ve also created a new sub-brand structure, we’ve designed a new visual identity and we’ve transformed the events brochure into a quarterly magazine format.

The brochure contents has been reordered to make the information more logical and therefore more accessible, while the clean, fresh style lends itself neatly to the creativity, vibrancy and friendliness of the organisation.

Exeter Phoenix is one of our design team’s favourite clients. Their work always provides an interesting mix of challenge, creativity, flexibility and style, and there was a surprising amount of ignorance, even locally, about all the exciting events, music, art, performance, cinema and education going on within those (slightly imposing) four walls. Since then we haven’t been there once without seeing something amazing! Check our their website for a closer look or better still, download the brochure!

Read more at: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/subway-to-launch-new-brand-strategy/3004226.article

Or check out their new ads here: www.thedrum.co.uk/news/2009/09/09/11338-subway-set-to-reveal-new-campaign

MCE Insurance, one of the UK’s top 3 providers of motorcycle insurance, has just appointed us to bolster its online presence and communication style. We will be working with MCE’s in-house design and web development team, providing input on brand personality, tone of voice, copywriting and online marketing.

Our remit is to build better brand awareness and customer loyalty online, and the whole project came from a social media marketing idea we took to them earlier this year. The social media project will form stage two of the campaign, which begins with the in-house team’s redesign of the existing website. We expect this programme to drive MCE’s online leads and sales, and ultimately to reduce their spend on Pay-Per-Click. It’s a great project – particularly for Jim, who loves his bikes (despite having a small ‘off’ earlier this year)!

Johnson Banks have recently completed their new identity project for the Swanswell Charitable Trust. Originally founded in 1968 as a small alcohol counselling agency, the Swanswell Charitable Trust has since grown into a much larger organisation. With growth had come brand confusion as well, with many initiatives taking on different names so it was time to revisit what they were about.

“When the trust approached us last year with their chosen, legacy name, we were a little unsure at first until we began to see that the “well” at the end of the word could be of use. Various typographic experiments followed, before the discovery that a piece of paper, crumpled at one end, could act as a suitable metaphor for someone’s life smoothing itself out.”— Johnson Banks Project Description

With several different degrees of ‘crumple’ the concept of this identity is fantastically innovative and covers a range of elements coherently within the new brand identity – for example, business cards come bound in little pad and are hand-crumpled individually. On a conceptual level, I love this design and the metaphor – I do wonder however, if having ‘Charitable Trust’ somewhere in the vicinity would have clarified its meaning to those who don’t take quite such an intellectual reading of it. I advise you take a look at the the Johnson Banks website for more examples for their Swanswell adverts and leaflets – here.

(Opinion: Jon Price – Designer)

The recession appears to have set in for at least a two-year period, and more and more people are turning to the Internet for a better deal. But still so many businesses are getting it wrong.

Most of us now accept that a website is a shop window. Just as most shoppers will look in a window on the High Street before they walk into a retailer, figures now indicate that more than 80% of potential customers will visit your website before they do business with you. With such compelling figures, why would any business not invest in a professional, well-thought-through web presence and online marketing strategy?

Click here for full article