‘Design consultancy’ is a somewhat dry term for what we do. But it’s about right. People come and talk to me about how their business might improve its communications. We then consult – which essentially means an initial conversation ensuring we’re talking our client’s visual and verbal language.

But when I meet someone who themselves runs a consultancy we’ve immediately got even more to discuss. There’s an understanding, if you will, of the service we are offering. Interestingly we’ve been doing a fair amount of this kind of work lately.

Earlier this summer we worked on a brand and website project for financial services management consultancy AlgoMe. Then this week we’ve completed a brand review and website redesign for The Hand – who offer business mentoring and lead generation for creative consultancies.

Both of these are great examples of our work providing brand and web design for consulting businesses.

I’ve been thinking lately about what management consultants do. My conclusion wasn’t a particularly revolutionary one: namely that ultimately a good consultancy will ensure that the right people are in the right place in a business, so it works and grows in the most effective way.

But this idea – of talented people being at the heart of ensuring a business works better – particularly struck me while we were completing a project for AlgoMe Consulting. They have spent the past couple of years building an online platform that matches people with career opportunities, mentoring relationships and the kind of professional networking events that can be so effective in business life.

Our brief from AlgoMe was to build on this, creating a management consultancy brand and web design project – utilising the creative work from the platform and defining them as a standalone business.

Over the past few months we have been working with executive search business Fraser Giles Partnership. With extensive expertise with the hospitality, retail, travel and leisure sectors, they spend their days finding the perfect people for the perfect roles.

In fact for this particular design agency, they were the perfect client. It’s as though, enjoying a ‘good fit’ by instinct every day, they just knew. We began our work for Fraser Giles Partnership with a brief for a new website but that proved to be just the starting point for this project rather than the defining parameters.

By the end of our work we will have effectively been rebranding an executive search firm – but in such a way that it enhances rather than departs from where they’ve been.

At the end of 2017 we were approached to work on the total re-brand of literary agency Diane Banks Associates. After over two years of planning, the management team had decided to fundamentally re-consider their business offering.

Today if you’re an author you don’t just write a book and then retreat back to your desk to start on the next one. There’s a world of talks, tours, social and traditional media where the lifespan of your work is extended.

With this, the traditional notion of a literary agent has fundamentally shifted… to one of thought leaders across multiple disciplines and exposure. The notion then is to take on clients with a far wider set of disciplines. This was no ordinary creative project – we were creating a new media brand design.

The end result of all this preparation is now revealed – and it’s called Northbank Talent Management.

Having worked for both luxury hotels and a wide range of corporate businesses over the years it seems logical that we might somehow combine the two. I must admit I never saw how we could creatively exploit the link – until recently.

My thinking has been that with a strong brand culture, most of the larger hotels in London logically focus their online presence on their customers. Then, invariably this sort of marketing-led creative work is handled centrally at a headquarters in, for instance, Milan or New York. But hotels are a business like any other and require a corporate side to their branding.

The first requirement of this is usually the part that makes the hotel tick – staff resourcing. It’s this interesting crossover of corporate and luxury that recently led us into our first luxury hotel web design project – for the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge.

Over the years it’s often occurred to me that we should focus on design for one specific business sector stick to and specialise in it. However every time I resolve that is what we are going to do, a fabulous little project comes along and I realise, yet again, that such a notion is once more scuppered. So I have come the the conclusion that in fact that’s essentially unworkable! What it comes down to is that perhaps our strength (and interest in the jobs we do!) comes from diversity.

A classic example of such an unusual ‘left turn’ project is The Antique Dispensary – an extraordinary online goldmine of beautiful antiques, selling vintage products online. We’ve just re-launched the site, replacing an original we designed and built back in 2012. That old site had lasted the distance but was created before a responsive build was something we did ‘as standard’ – and after six years needed a wide-ranging design and technical update.