Everything has a battery in it. Things that we could never have imagined needing one, now require a power source. Thermostats. Doorbells. Picture frames. All need charging – and crucially, all contain the same sort of lithium battery we’ve been using for decades. The devices they reside within may be cutting edge, but the source of their power is another matter.

That’s not true progress and certainly isn’t sustainable.

There are teams all over the world working on this problem, but one of them, LiNa Energy, a startup at Lancaster University, is working on a new type of battery platform using sodium. Our role has been to work on a rebrand project – which has turned out to be a superb case study of tech startup logo and web design.

People often talk about owners resembling their pets. In the TikTok era, this usually arrives with a readymade set of outlandish video proof, usually involving an upside down cat or extremely disgruntled bulldog.

While I’m not one for crazy pet memes, I do think there’s an (admittedly tangential) metaphor to draw between the pets/owners trope and something that occurred to me at the weekend: namely websites being a stylistic reflection of the businesses they belong to.

This thought was inspired by a project we’ve just completed, a web design for real estate business London & Oriental. As a company they are particularly proud of their attention to detail, so we felt the need to rise to that challenge ourselves.

The end result is that every aspect of the site’s layout has been considered and then re-thought, the end result being the most perfect, almost architecturally structured layout.

One of my earliest memories is taking the cover off my grandmother’s old manual typewriter, complete with ribbon and rollers, and typing out (on sheets of reused letterhead from a long-defunct amateur dramatic society) official notices which I would post on my bedroom door.

Later on, this interest in type and signage found a further outlet in an after-school printing club which used two ancient, single-colour hand-cranked litho presses. I remember preparing customised luggage tags, elaborate letterheads and neat labels for drawers and storage racks. In my teenage years I got involved in a scrappy, irreverent school magazine which was produced by taping together cartoons, print-outs and rushed to a photocopier to a meet a deadline.

I am reminded of these projects when we work on our long-time charitable outlet, the Shine School Media Awards, and then more recently on a new endeavour to raise money for the Cavell Nurses’ Trust, the Bourlet Young Masters  Art Prize competition. Their common thread: inspiring creativity in young people.

Over the past six months we’ve been working on a series of great brand and web projects. This is one of the biggest and covers nearly all the disciplines in which we work. Our client is the global business logistics consultancy MovePlan.

Their brief to us was to retain their longstanding brand identity and update it by working on a fresh approach to all the ‘moving parts’. This has covered in particular creating a library of custom photography which we’ve applied to the digital assets they use for sales.

With so much uncertainty around today, the kind of project where a strong, familiar brand is updated with better marketing may suit many businesses. In particular those with one eye on ‘what comes next’ and how best to use a squeezed marketing budget. Strategic thinking is the order of the day and this project is a great answer to the question ‘how do I plan a rebrand?’.

Like most of you, I am having the strange experience of working sitting at a repurposed kitchen table. My team are scattered in various living rooms and hallways around London, and we’re making the best of working from home by Zooming and Slacking.

While it’s not quite the same sort of team working as we’re familiar with, everyone is gradually getting used to it.

As for our clients, it seems that colleagues spread far and wide like ours are doing their often impressive level best to keep workflow going. Days are spent online, leading many of us to wonder how to go about making the web work harder. Our personal and working worlds have shrunk, but how can we avoid our businesses doing the same?

As somebody who grew up with an accountant for a father, I’ve always been taught the value of money and the reassuring precision of sums that add up. You know where you stand, for good or ill. This exactitude has an echo in the satisfaction of geometry and symmetry.

Not every piece of brand design we work on has to follow rules or be symmetrical – life would be rather dreary if so. However, when working on a corporate finance logo and web design brief, there’s an argument for finding a rather specific balance.

It’s a perspective that has been realised for business consultants Harrier Partners and the branding work we’ve just completed for them.