Brand, icon and logo design

Does your business appear up to date?

Sometimes it just creeps up on you, sometimes it’s a nagging feeling… when you look at your brand icon and logo design and suddenly realise: that’s in need of a new look.

Whether you’re in London or throughout the UK, the value of considered brand, icon and logo design cannot be over-stated. And it’s this attention to detail and impression a modern, fresh brand gives that should be as important to a business leader as any other aspect of his sales and marketing strategy. Location isn’t as important as first impression.

Often there’s no space to be sentimental: if your company logo isn’t giving the right ‘face to the world’ and attracting customers, it’s time for a re-think. Perhaps even if your service offering has evolved, or even more important, your customer base has shifted up-market (or down), as always, you need to go where the profit lies.

… and good design and good profit usually go hand in hand.

Branding and web design for interiors specialists

Just some of our brand, icon and logo design work at Richard Chapman Studio

How to stay fresh

In today’s fast-paced multi-brand world, we’re very used to seeing logos appearing everywhere.

A sticker on a snowboard. Alongside a tagline on a canvas shopping bag. A trade-show banner. On large-format advertising on a billboard. The examples are endless.

Interestingly, often it’s at a time like this, when you’re using an old logo in a new way, that the weakness or dated feel of the graphic design can begin to make itself felt.

But using fresh marketing techniques is half the battle. A crisply-designed corporate e-newsletter, even with your existing logo, instantly infers you’re moving with the times simply because of the media deployed.

Nautica Law‘s City of London offices used our identity design as well as a graphic pattern inspired by it, over glass, throughout.

Above Diamond applied our brand design to their new boutique in Bangkok’s Siam Square.

St Giles-in-the-Fields church had our logo hand-painted on a sign just near Charing Cross Road in Central London

Do we have to change our logo?

A misunderstanding many people have about ‘rebranding’ is that it involves a total redesign of their logo.

In fact we’ve often found that corporate identity can be something we can work with by adding in new colours, different typefaces, usually alongside a major project like a website redesign.

Even if a logo feels dated, there is that old design chestnut the “evolution not revolution” approach, where a logo is given a series of modern touches and made more current, while retaining the key features that long-time customers remember. It retains your brand values and shows you’re staying modern but not abandoning core principles and values.

LiNa Energy laser-etched the symbol we designed for them to their concept battery cell.

Sands End Arts & Community Centre use the identity we designed for them on the street in west London as well as within their beautiful building.

When it’s time to start again

Clients often approach us and say, ‘we’re ready for a total facelift – lose everything and start the design of the brand from scratch’. In itself this is an amazing opportunity – but for us is a time to tread carefully.

Experience has shown that a total redesign results in a dramatic and wonderful presentation, but the element of surprise isn’t always quite how the customer had imagined. It’s inevitable that a major redesign will end up with fresh, bold ideas but they’re rarely what the customer had in their head. And that’s not easy for either customer or designer.

To avoid tricky situations, we’ve begun working in a more co-operative way, sharing early-stage sketches and initial ideas with our clients so they’re involved from the start. This way we can gain crucial early feedback and pursue ideas which are to the client’s taste, and share iterations and further ideas in that style.

Ultimately a brand re-design is a massively rewarding experience. For a mature brand to look at themselves afresh can lead to internal renewal, and fresh purpose. Everyone notices the difference, even if they make not say so. From our perspective, it’s this immediate reaction from your client base that makes the exercise worth doing alone.

Plus – the launch is a marvellous excuse for a party!

Having used the same logo for many years, commercial wine suppliers Le Verre Gourmand embraced a total refresh of their brand as part of a re-launch of the business.

After a merger, legal partnership Freedman+Hilmi asked us to give them a total rebrand resulting in this elegant, geometric logo.

Time for a design update?

We’d love to help you realise your business ambitions with strong branding design, including –

  • a distinctive new business identity
  • a modern website showcasing your business to the world
  • a convincing, clear slide deck to present to investors and clients
  • that all-important business card

Give us a call on 020 7351 4083 or email direct