Category: Brand Development

What are the aspects of a rebrand?

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Taking on a rebrand is a serious commitment. You need to be sure that this is what’s needed for your business to move forward but also that you know what you need before going into it. It may seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be made so much simpler by knowing what is required. Within this article, we are going to look at what you as a company and brand need to look at when you are considering a rebrand

Have you determined your brands target audience?

Every brand needs a target audience, no matter what it is you are selling. These are the people that you hope are going to be buying the majority of your products or services. However, after 5, maybe 10 years as a brand evolves, does your target audience change? This is the first question that you need to ask yourself before going through with a rebrand. The current brand that you have will have been created to appeal to certain people, but as you evolve more and more people are going to be buying your products or using your services and as such when your rebrand you can’t focus solely on those you did before. You need to conduct research into who your current customers are and base your need branding on them.

Have you established a brand mission statement?

As every company or brand begins, it is important that you have a mission statement. This is for telling customers why you are doing what you are doing. What do you want to gain from selling your products or services? It is important that this is often customer focused, as not very many people are going to buy from a company who’s mission statement is ‘we want to make money’, just keep that bit to yourself. But over the years that you are in business, might your mission statement change? As you start to offer new products or services, or gain a new customer base, you might begin to see that what you are selling your products for changes. You need to make sure that when you are going through with a rebrand, you take this into consideration and base it around the new mission statement.

More importantly, does your brand truly reflect your current offerings and product?

As we have previously stated, over the course of 5 or 10 years that your company is in business, the products or services that you sell may very well change. You might change as a brand completely but it is more likely that you will just branch out and offer more products or services than you did at the beginning. With this, you need to reflect on what your brand says against what it is you are selling. If they don’t match, then you know that it is time to think about a rebrand, to ensure your customers don’t get confused, or that the new product you are offering doesn’t fail because no-one knows you are selling it.

Is your brand ready for your future projects and clients?

You may be thinking about a rebrand, but not sure if you should or not. However, one question that we suggest you ask yourself is are you ready for the future? The current direction that you are heading, do you think that this will be enough for 5 or 10 year down the line, when the market that you are in has shifted and new competitors have entered the fray? This is where you need to do further research on the market and your competitors, to see what exactly they are doing and try to build your new rebrand off this.

How has your business changed its values or consumers since the last time you looked at your branding?

There is a fair possibility that you haven’t looked into your businesses values or your consumers in any great depth since you first started your company. However, before going into a rebrand it is very important to do this. Look at how your customers may have changed from when you began to now. Has the age range increased or decreased? What demographic are they coming from? Looking at all of this will help immensely in bringing about your rebrand and making sure that it is what works for you

Here at Kaizen Brand Evolution we want to make sure that when you are undertaking a rebrand it is the best you can get and also one that works for you and where your company is at in the moment. If you feel like you are heading towards a rebrand, please do not hesitate to give us a call on 028 9005 2007 or send us en email to studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com, we’d love to chat.

Apples & Mermaids Round-Up

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At the end of January, we here at Kaizen Brand Evolution held our first event/workshop of the year, titled Apples & Mermaids. This was a workshop detailing the importance the logos play in our lives and just how important they are to businesses everywhere, no matter what industry they are in. The event took place in The Mac, Belfast which we can only say had a fantastic set-up for us.

Ryan Stanfield, our very own Design Director, was the speaker during the event, taking us through what logos mean to us and also how we are influenced by them. For example, is there a brand that you are faithful to and won’t deviate from even if someone else is offering a similar product at a cheaper price? Think perhaps shoe or trainer manufacturers. If you are always buying Adidas trainers, you are less likely going to buy anything that Nike might have to offer. The same can be said for Vans and Converse. It is usually one or the other. However, if you remove the logo from these products and do a test, you might find that your loyalties change. This is because it is all to do with the brand and logo that we see, the logo that we feel a connection with.

Those that attended the event were also given the opportunity to put their own design skills to the test, being given an exercise where they had to try and figure out what symbol, font and colours best suited a certain company. The point of this was to show those in attendance the process that goes into creating a logo for a company and how much else there is involved, rather than just sketching something and saying it is okay. It is vital to look at what industry you are in and see what would go well. But it is also important to look at what other people in the same industry are doing.

At the end of the morning, guests had the chance to ask Ryan some questions, getting further insight into his knowledge and also help with understanding some of their own projects that they are undertaking. As well as this, they had the opportunity to chat with some other team members who were in attendance.

It was a great morning had by all and we can’t thank everyone who came enough, helping to make it so. We are now in full preparation mode for our next upcoming event, “When is a good time to rebrand” taking place on 22nd of February in The Academy Restaurant. If you would like to buy tickets, you can do so right here: http://bit.ly/rebrandtime

If you feel that you are in need of some inspiration and help with your current branding project or perhaps you are a company just starting out, then please do not hesitate to contact us either by email at studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com or else by phone on 028 9057 2007 to get your next project underway.

Glo – Brand Creation

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Recently we branded Glo Beauty, a new Beauty Salon in Belfast. This undertaking included: full brand development, logo design website design and social media campaigns.

The client’s ambition was to create a modern beauty salon offering a customer service in Belfast. Bringing a similar feel to other Cities across the globe like Dublin, London, New York and Milan. Glo is based in Kings Square, off Kings Road, Belfast. Offering a variety of services from Manicure & Pedicures, Tanning, Wax & Hair Removal, Eye Enhancements, to Make Up. Building upon the foundation, Glo will deliver a quirky experience, which makes you feel really good about yourself.

Glo Beauty is one of the first Beauty Salons in Belfast, to be funky, modern and appointment only to give you a premium service and only using the Top Market brands. Ireland’s Leading Make up artist Aimee Connolly (Sculpted) has trained Glo’s very own Maria Chesser. Maria is a prodigy in the industry, bringing elements she has learned from across the country into Belfast. As well as running the business Maria wants to get heavily involved with the services, as that’s what she’s being training for. She will be available for appointments as well.

Glo approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to brand their Salon opening in their Flagship Store in Belfast. They asked us to design and develop a new branding system for their salon; it needed to feel welcoming, bright, and luxurious. It should look modern so it could really stand out in Belfast. We wanted to Glo to brighten up the beauty industry in Northern Ireland.

Our research revealed some amazing hair salons and beauty brands across the globe. We explored texture, palette, photography – fashion, landscape and otherwise. We tested and worked with a range of type, and mark making to create something unique. We used “Your skin is Glowing” as the initial concept behind the brand identity. We combined an array of light and eyelashes for beauty with the word GLO. This creates a beautiful mark, which becomes the GLO Ray device that can be used to highlight the subject and used throughout the branding collateral. The colours used in Glo Beauty are natural colours, which will work in contrasting colours across the brand.

We incorporated ‘Glo’ into the language. This helped with the photography direction used within the brand. We created Glo’s brand language and tone of voice to offer her services. Statements like “You Glo Girl and “Glo on your Day” were created during the creative writing process for the brand. Glo Beauty Is the place where you’ll feel better every time, your skin will Glo and to really make the brand shine we had to show the brand could be used to motivate women and feel positive about the way they look. Using this brand language will help Glo in the future for marketing campaigns and advertising and will across the services Glo offers.  We married together the brand language and the logo mark to successfully to show Glo’s brand.

Following the identity and language creation, we implemented the branding across a number of deliverables. We visualised how the brand can be used across everything Glo will need from coffee cups to uniforms to help with the overall experience at Glo. These visuals will help show the direction on how the brand can be used for the signage to branded collateral for when Maria goes to beauty events. Having a strong visual brand with a clear message will help her stand out amongst the big competitors within the industry.

It was great to work on the branding for Glo and we look to seeing the brand will be rolled out across their social media, uniforms and in the salon itself as Glo continues to evolve.

The Number 3 – Brand Identity

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The Number Three is a traditional Bar & Restaurant based in Limerick with a contemporary audience. Previously trading as Tom & Jerry’s it has since changed owners, the new proprietors wanted a brand to reflect the new services that they would have to offer of food and drink as well as live music. The name Number Three comes from the location on Glenworth Street.  The logo’s mark is tasked to show that the business serves food as well as alcohol through iconography, we have interpreted the request across the logo with the symbolisation of beer, drinks and food brought into the logo. The most important message was food/drink and bringing that together for the new bar and therefore we came up with the tagline ‘Pub & Grub’ this shows the traditional Irish side with the slang term ‘grub’ meaning food, as well as the pub element. As the new owners are starting out fresh they wanted the logo to look contemporary but with the old Irish feel to fit in with the local community of Limerick and the industry landscape. Kaizen Brand Evolution had to create a logo that was adaptable for the future that didn’t fit in with trends so that it could be timeless and stand alone for the business and stay classic for the duration of the bar’s lifespan.

The No 3. logo design uses a timeless cursive styled font with vector illustrations of wheat, barley the types used in beer making, there is also wine bottles to symbolise the pub and drinking aspect. We have also used the iconography of a knife and fork to show the grub side, the style is a contemporary vector design around the framing to show food and drink together. The logo is a established with the colour scheme gold and dark green to give an old traditional feel of Irish food and drink in Limerick. The logo shape is in a circle with the iconography crafted around it, the circle breaks for the wheat and barley at each end to come to show. It gives that traditional friendly vibe with a modern take on it with the vector illustrations. The photography and art direction style is comfort and homely atmosphere with a sepia filter, showing good live music with also traditional connotations.

The No. 3 logo comes in two versions, the circular version with iconography and main 3 typography as well as the longer version with ‘The Number Three’ in landscape for signage for the front of the bar. For the rollout of The No. 3 logo, it will be used on glass etching for the glass windows which will work well for the etching typography for the number three, signage for the front of the bar and interiors, mirrors, doors, food and drink menus, social media. The interior designer will be working alongside the brand for the No.3 to give that homely traditional but feel inside with booths, picture frames, high stools, a long bar and wooden interiors everything you would expect to see in your typical traditional Irish bar. We look forward to working with The No.3 across all of the deliverables and seeing the brand live in Limerick, we wish the owners the best of luck in their new venture.

United Wines – Brand Identity

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United Wine Merchants approached the brand team at Kaizen Brand Evolution with the objective of repositioning their brand identity and communications to be more in line with their unique service, product and reputation. With over 36 years in business, United Wines have moved with the times in terms of their product portfolio and brand associations, however, their own brand has remained unchanged. Today the company is modern, forward-thinking, and upholds a formidable reputation. With this said it deserved an identity to truly represent them.

In their own words:

United Wine Merchants incorporating HEINEKEN NI is a dedicated Agency led wholesale business within the Licensed Trade servicing the entire On and Off Trade.  As a subsidiary of HEINEKEN IRELAND, we are the licensed wholesale company responsible for developing the HEINEKEN portfolio including Orchard Thieves across Northern Ireland. Now in our 34th year of operation, we pride ourselves on our market leading and award-winning portfolio of Beers, Wines, Spirits, and Soft Drinks. Beyond timely supply and reliable delivery, we have got a range of marketing support and an experienced sales team to help you select the right range for your customers. We can design your wine lists, supply POS and provide your staff with product training as our Sales and Marketing team are all WSET qualified.

The team at Kaizen Brand Evolution created 3 unique brand designs for United Wine Merchants, each one exploring separate USP’s and reflections of their current standing in the marketplace. From colour variation, negative space, wine hints and some contemporary type styles we aimed to flex our creative skills in this brand audit, after all, it has been 30 years since the current branding, time for us to show potential. The new, chosen brand mark incorporates modernity, negative space and a clear, focused typestyle. The colour palette is reflective of their current ‘wine palette’ with a great balance of a highlight and base ‘berry purple.’ Each element of the logo represents truthfully the ambition United Wines set us from the outset. You will also notice that the word “merchants’ has been removed from the primary, simply for simplicity. When referring to the company people tend to drop the Merchants, so we dropped it.

Language plays an important role in the new brand direction for United Wines.  We put together a language style for the brand to take forward, one which highlights their USP’s but one that has an almost tongue in cheek wordplay. Statements such as ‘from harvest for beer fest’ for ‘forward thinking drink’ set the brand apart from local and national competitors. Setting this tone of voice at the beginning of the new brands journey will pave the way for how the brand communicates on and offline, short and sweet…but engaging. The company and staff at United Wines are extremely personable and friendly so the language guide was set to reflect not only their products and service but their people – something that United Wines pride themselves on.

We directed the artistic and photographic style for the new branding using process, ingredients and the art of creating the products they sell at United Wines – rather that typical product imagery or cheesy stock imagery. The new visual narrative for the company has depth and explores the story of their products.

We are extremely proud of the United Wines rebrand and continue to roll the branding and design out across digital and printed materials. The new United Wines website is under development in the Kaizen Brand Evolution studio as well as the new internal office and vehicle livery which we are excited to see live and kicking. If you feel your business is in need of a rebrand or repositioning to represent your service or product accurately simply get in touch with our award winning brand experts at studio@kaizenbrandevolution.com

Sports Medicine NI – Branding

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Sports Medicine NI approached Kaizen Brand Evolution wishing to create a new brand to go with their new premises in Windsor Park. In their own words “Sports Medicine NI offers a comprehensive management service for athlete injury and health. Using our in-house sports science and medicine experts, we are able to provide a holistic team approach to guide the athlete on their journey to health and performance. Whether you are an international athlete, a coach, sports club/association or simply someone who enjoys being active, we are able to provide tailored support to recover from injury, regain health and remain healthy to achieve your sporting goals. Our specialists have experience in working with athletes and teams at the highest level and can bring that expertise to address your specific problem in one venue, simplifying the process, increasing the communication and reducing the cost.”

Sports Medicine NI target market is anyone who has been injured through physical activity or someone who takes part in physical activity or competitive sport. Their ideal customer would be a regular gym player or an amateur sports player, coach or schools player. Sports Medicine NI provides expert advice on all athlete injury, illness and performance. The aim of Sports Medicine NI is to get the player back into the game and for them to stay in the game. They specialise in physiotherapy, exercise physiology, sports psychology, sports nutrition, strength and conditioning and sports medicine, with touch points also in radiology, surgery and other specialities.

From this excellent brief from the client we were able to use this terminology for the language and strapline, this came as the key brand pillars of “Injury, Health, Performance”. For the key narrative, “Getting you back in the game” ‘helping you stay in the game’ and ‘succeed in the game’ was thought of as it covers all of the key touch points for the clients ideal market. The positive messaging shows what Sports Medicine NI can do for you throughout your sporting career. This is paired up with an inline font to highlight the words, back and stay and also in keeping with the logo design.

The Sports Medicine NI logo is made up of lines symbolising the many lines on a track or pitch, and an arrow is crafted in the M to show positivity and moving forward. The logo used a friendly soft san serif font – Effra – which is approachable and corporate at the same time. A key element in the rebrand was to have a smaller version of the logo using the SM only which can be used with and without Sports Medicine NI to the right-hand side. The colour scheme used is a cobalt blue, bright yellow and turquoise as the brand colours. The colours are bright, they stand out and are also current, as well as being representative of a sports brand such as Nike and Adidas. Additional colours of navy, pink and red are used to highlight six key sections within the brand. Throughout the brand rollout, the arrow is used in the M in the SM NI logo to denote the forward thinking and moving forward, which is very important in a athletes life, especially if they have suffered from injury.

The photography used within the brand is bright and full of colour, showcasing athletes taking part in their chosen sports, as Sports Medicine NI has clients from all manner of different sports. We have used a diverse range from swimming to karate, as well as the most popular sports such as football, boxing and rugby.

The brand rollout has been visualised on a number of different deliverables including billboards, website and social media, business stationery, flyers, signage and uniform. We enjoyed greatly working on this project and we look forward to continuing working with Sports Medicine NI as their brand rolls out.

The benefits of the rebrand

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One of the most powerful and effective times to re-brand is when a business sees a great change in circumstance, a takeover, a merger a new product line or direction. The benefits of rebranding now are so you have the opportunity to communicate truthfully exactly what the change means to the business and express exactly what it is and how you are going to do it differently. A re-brand can reposition a company’s reputation, re-establish a failing business, make relevant what was a tired product or service and increase or develop a new interest in a business and its purpose. There are many factors but there are three main benefits that a re-brand can have for a company or service.

Refresh

A rebrand completely refreshes a business from the ground up. A new identity and re-brand project with pull the truth out from under the surface and find out what really sets you apart from the competitors and rival companies. With this understanding the re-brand with truthfully express (through logo, language and art direction) what it means to work with you as a business. USP’s are brought to the forefront, how you work differently and what makes you unique as a company can all be expressed in your re-brand. A successful re-brand will not follow design trends but assess who you are, what you do, why you are here and who you are here for. Ambition setting allows a design team to realise your potential through branding and communications. A re-brand is not simply there to impress your customers but also your team, your loyal staff who have been sitting under the same masthead for a number of years now have a voice during the research stage with the brand agency. Involvement and belief from your team will benefit brand culture internally and appeal greatly to those ideal candidates – we all want the best people to work for us and your brand and culture is an important factor in that decision-making process – would you want to drop in a CV to a tired, lacklustre looking brand? Or would it make more sense to engage with a brand that speaks your language?

Relevance

A rebrand can make a tired product or service relevant in today’s marketplace, tap into the mindset of modern consumers and engage relevantly. Your product or service might be the best, the strongest the most efficient, but if the branding, packaging or shop front isn’t relevant to todays consumer or shall we say ‘attractive’ then you can easily lose interest to young, bright and bold competition. Perhaps their product or services isn’t nearly as good as yours but they, of course, are relevant. This is a key attribute of a re-brand – to re-establish your brand/logo/packaging/website – whatever communication or brand exposure you have to become relevant to the right consumer.

Restate

To restate what you ‘now’ do is a fantastic benefit of a rebrand as it gives you a new opportunity to restate all of the lovely new things you have to off that perhaps customers might not know about – your new lines of products, your new technological advance, your new building or premises these are all seismic shifts in your business and through the power or identity, language and artdirectionn – the milestones of a rebrand you can restate your offering to your audience and restate it correctly with intrigue and excitement.

There are many reasons a re-brand can is beneficial, and the proof is in the pudding. Get in touch with the Kaizen Brand Evolution team to talk further if you feel like you might be ready to re-brand.

McQuillan Companies – Brand Identity

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McQuillan companies approached the branding team at Kaizen Brand Evolution to re-position and revitalise their brand identity. The family-owned business is well established across Northern Ireland and is specialists in civil engineering, quarrying, waste management and outdoor cleaning services to name a few. McQuillan Companies have a large presence on the road, their vehicles being instantly recognisable, a lot of which is down to their unique colour palette, something that the branding team had to keep in mind throughout the brand audit. Auditing a brand is our way of truthfully expressing the business offering today, whilst retaining loyal clients brand understanding and improving brand touchpoints (such as vehicle livery) we aim to create a brand purpose that keeps the business relevant and exciting for new and potential future clients.

McQuillan Companies – in their own words:

McQuillan Companies are a Northern Ireland based family run business which incorporates a diverse range of activities including civil engineering, demolition, quarrying, hazardous and non-hazardous waste management, outdoor cleaning services and analytical chemistry. A fourth generation business operating for over 100 years through the parent company John McQuillan Contracts, the McQuillan Companies name is synonymous with quality and excellence throughout our various divisions.

Getting started we focussed our research and investigation to forward-thinking, modern brands in the engineering, construction and land service industry – looking to London, New York and further afield. With brand learning’s from across the globe we built a solid understanding of what branding was working and not working in this industrial landscape. Following initial research and mood boarding, we filtered the findings down into 3 solid directions and began brand planning.

We initially developed the narrative before jumping into the design for McQuillan Companies. The narrative on this occasion was ‘Here for tomorrow’ – a modern, forward-thinking strapline for a modern, forward thinking business who are, in effect working on making tomorrow a better, safer place to live. We purposely avoided building or construction clichés so that the narrative was widespread across the entire company intern breeding a positive brand culture – essentially this narrative has legs to be flexible across different business facets.

We now needed a logo mark that reflected what we were talking about in the narrative. The McQuillan monogram stems from the idea of engineering and overall solid work that the company undertake. The new logo is a strong, trustworthy mark that brings together the initials of the family name and visualises the industry – simply. Our goal for any brand undertaking is to simplify, make brands that people get, without the use of selfish design techniques or trends. The logo proves successful when used across brand materials and especially in the brand livery and uniforms. Alongside the new mark, we introduced a structured contemporary typeface that suits the tone of voice and industry of McQuillan Companies. The flexibility of the new identity becomes apparent across the different business sectors where the company sector is simply introduced to the stacked lettering in each instance. Throughout the new branding, we have directed the new photography style, using modern dramatic images of the work in progress as well as team members in situ.

The crescendo of the brand audit was the re-design and use of the new branding across the vehicles. The vehicles that define a McQuillan job have been reinvented for future use and business growth, utilising the flexibility of the new logo mark and brand narrative they suitably stand out on the roads and truthfully represent the businesses heritage and future.

It was a pleasure working on the brand audit for McQuillan Companies and we look forward to rolling out the brand collateral in the not too distant future.

Tonic Pharmacy – Branding

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Tonic is a friendly, caring Pharmacy based in the heart of Derry/Londonderry. The Pharmacy began in February 1987 with John MacCafferty (originally with the name MacCafferty’s Chemist) with a belief that focusing on the delivery of a personal customer experience. They offer a variety of pharmaceutical services to meet the health needs of the local community.

They are the first in the area to provide a 24-hour prescription ordering app and messaging service. You can also order popular health and beauty products from their online shop.

In their own words:

“We are dedicated to providing a friendly, caring pharmacy experience with an emphasis put on delivering a quality, efficient healthcare service to our community. In November 2007, we purchased the Pharmacy and by following the same ethos the business has continued to grow.

Tonic pharmacy is a trusted e-commerce platform for anyone to purchase quality skin care and health care products, which help people feel better about themselves. Tonic in a sense means rejuvenating/ up-lifting/ invigorating/ replenishing. We sell only products that we feel have these properties and help ailments and treat concerns. We try to focus on natural products, which are not tested on animals and contain only natural ingredients. We offer an e-commerce service to collect in store with 48 hours: ‘pick-me-up’ service or an e-commerce delivery experience option for any of our products. What sets us apart from other retailers is that we have a dedicated pharmacist available to guide and advise on suitability and choice of products via an online chat/email conversation.”

Tonic approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to rebrand their pharmacy of 31 years. They asked us to design and develop a new branding system for a pharmacy, skincare, well-being store and e-commerce business that needed to be contemporary, bright, striking and clean. It should look modern so it could really stand out in Derry/Londonderry, or in any city if they decided to branch out. We wanted Tonic to set a new standard for how modern pharmacies should look.

They wanted to reach a new target audience of Men and Women aged 35+ and Parents. People who really wanted to feel good and really look after themselves would be the type of people Tonic wanted to be their customers.

The new Tonic Pharmacy wordmark consists of the word Tonic and a mortar & pestle (as it’s a tool used to crush, grind and mix solid substances into a powder). Tonic wanted to promote more of their natural medicines. We felt people know Tonic is a medicine, which has a general effect of making you feel good and the mortar and pestle best sums up their natural products.

We developed a tone of voice, which feels really positive, friendly and trustworthy. We wanted people to feel reassured, “Heal & Soothe” knowing Tonic is always there for you, 24-hours a day in-store or online. You can always rely on Tonic, they want you to feel good.

As well as the branding system we had created illustrations of what they stand for; a flower (for natural remedies), a clock (for 24-hour service) and Derry’s Guild Hall (for Trusting Local) using the elements of the mortar & pestle. It would be fun to work on other illustrations. We also created some visuals on how the brand could work across different mediums including their delivery van, packaging, business cards/stationery, signage and their website.

Over time when Tonic has become more established, the T and the Mortar & Pestle could be used stand-alone, and it will still be recognized as Tonic Pharmacy.

We enjoyed working with Tonic Pharmacy on this branding project; we can’t wait to see the brand being rolled out across their vans, social media and perhaps a visit to their store. I would like to see Tonic expand and set the bar for modern pharmacies.

Blast 106 FM Brand Development

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Belfast’s most music station Blast FM approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to design and develop a new brand identity system for their group of radio stations across the UK and Ireland. Blast FM has been live on air for a number of years and reached a point of significant growth, and they needed a brand identity that was going to help propel them to even greater heights, appealing to more listeners. The market of radio is highly competitive and the team at Blast FM needed a unique identity to truly reflect what they offer and stand out in their industry landscape.  Blast Fm’s brief was to create a modern, recognisable identity that spoke to their core audience correctly as well as being bright and bold. They wanted something that was going to stand out within the market, showing them as one of the leading players within the industry. A unique request was to include a WAV file of an important figurehead from Blast FM talking who had recently passed, a touching piece of communication now represented forever in their brand mark. Blast FM as a group own 7 further stations and a part of the challenge was to create their identity so that it could become a flexible mark, easily recognisable across all markets, as well as being easily adapted in colour and name for other stations whilst retaining the group look and feel.

We designed a flexible identity system around the concept of the play button. The play button represents radio, music, playfulness and fun so we thought it was the perfect symbolism for the group identity. We also introduced a secondary keyline surrounding the play button to represent movement, volume and radio signal. Utilising the play button’s shape we were able to house the frequencies of each station and the WAV file from the brief. The play button acts as the boilerplate brand mark for the set of group marks, on each of the different stations identities the colours change as well as the frequencies of the related station. The name of each station and it’s geographical location sits to the left of the button and is easily interchangeable as the brand rolls out across the remaining stations – Blast Fm Belfast, Iur Fm Newry & Mourne, ABC across the ABC region, Blast Digital Glasgow, Your Fm Stockport, Blast Blackburn and Blast Northwest. Each station adopts its own unique colour system, each palette as bright and eye-catching as the last. This approach keeps the group brand profile true across all business areas and reinforces the brand personality across the UK and Ireland.

Along with the play mark, we introduced black and white art direction for the brand imagery. The choice for black and white imagery was primarily to place further emphasis on the identity and its bold colour palette. The two, when designed together, marry very well and create an over well rounded, bright and modern identity with a considerable and noticeable change from their previous brand identity. The photography is primarily portraiture of key musicians featured on playlists from the respective radio station. Each set of images is put together in a concertina format for use across social media, advertising and in print. We also introduced a set of geometric 3-dimensional backgrounds for the Blast FM brand rollout which can be seen on their social media channels. The geometric shapes and 3D effect simply adds depth to the brand mark and creates a more modern corporate brand world for the new mark to thrive in.

As the brand rollout continues across the entire group we look forward to creating further digital and printed collateral. As brand guardians for each of the business facets, we have a clear understanding of how the branding should be treated across all mediums. We thoroughly enjoyed the design and developments of the brand system for Blast FM and look forward to seeing the branding out in the real world as it begins to evolve.

Harlow Brand Identity

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The client’s ambition was to supply top of the line Italian and Scandinavian fashions online with an eventual ‘bricks and mortar’ store in Northern Ireland.  The brand had no name, identity, narrative or visual strategy. It was our job to sculpt and direct the branding from naming to delivery.

We chose a name that reflected the company’s ambitions, high-end, one with an abstract meaning and a subtle hint to a landscape in which the clothes are made. The name Harlow was a great driver for the identity creation and overall styling of the brand collateral, as it reflects elegance, subtly and confidence.  The naming process was approached with the same rigour as any brand identity project. Firstly with research and investigation, looking at hundreds of colloquial, European meanings and names, names that echoed style, femininity, and confidence, all brand pillars of what is now known as Harlow Clothing Company.

With the company name to hand, we could now focus on creating the brand identity. Our research revealed some really outstanding fashion outlets and quirky retailers across the globe. We explored texture, palette, photography – fashion, landscape and otherwise. We tested and worked with an array of type, symbolism and mark making. We used the stem ‘passion led us here’ as a backbone narrative for the project – this language opened up the door for passionate photography, and an overall ‘chill’ – ‘hippy’ lifestyle vibe for the brand – something that the client was immediately connected with.  The narrative paved way for an ‘airy,’ modern use of type with wide spacing between letters. The font used for the primary type mark is a Grecian typeface, one that screams ‘foreign contemporary’ to keep in line with the business ambition and to suit the product. The type in the mark now decided upon we wanted to introduce a simple device to enhance the overall identity. Traditionally when thinking to European or foreign language we expect to see accents or glyphs that derive from foreign alphabets, so how do we introduce this – cleverly. Taking inspiration from the missing holes inside a button we introduced an “umlaut”-style device above the H in Harlow. This addition creates a unique brand identity and creates a new brand atmosphere to begin to use dots and the separated H as part of the brand material and roll out.

The colour palette is subtle, confident and modern reflective of the 3 pillars of Harlow Clothing Company. The greys and blues echo the denim and highbrow fashion on sale. Pairing the colour palette with fashion photography enhances the brand personality, solidifying the clients’ expectations and price ticket of some of the brands on sale at harowclothing.co. Harlow’s initial brands are Italian denim magnates Freddy and Scandinavia’s SVEA – two unique, stylish brands that radiate quality and fashion. Harlow sits confidently in this brand landscape and showcases the products on sale fantastically. The photography brings another element of landscape to the identity, transporting its customers to the origins of the garments on sale. The photography is a welcome addition to the brand pack, it’s storytelling ability enhances the experience and establishes the new business as an already market leader in this field. I must highlight that Harlow is the first business in Northern Ireland to stock and sell the Freddy and SVEA brands.

We designed all brand material from online e-commerce site to tags, labels, packaging and signage. All brand elements adapt the same brand tone, minimal yet impactful. The brand is now live and boasts an already impressive online following on Instagram. As Harlow’s reputation builds we continue to work with them, acting as brand guardians, as they evolve so do we.

GB Poultry Brand Development

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The family business of GB Poultry contacted Kaizen Brand Evolution wanting to their refresh the identity of their well known brand. GB stands for Gregory Bell which is the family name of the business established since 1982 that has been passed down the generations. In their own words “GB Poultry Ltd is a family owned business based in Crossgar in the rolling countryside of County Down”. There are 7 Directors in the company, all from the Bell family who are personally involved and committed to the general day to day running and operating of the business. An EC Approved Cutting plant and are guided by DAERA (Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs). Supplying a wide range of Whole Chicken, Flash Fried Chicken, Sauces, Cooked Chicken, Turkeys and other meat products. GB Poultry wanted to modernise their brand and bring it into the future as they are leading in their field of poultry in Ireland. Supplying to outlets such as Boojum, Pallas Foods and Henderson a refresh of brand is what they wanted to align with their customers aspirations.

One of the main USPs that GB Poultry wanted to bring across is that they are from Crossgar, a small village in County Down, we travelled down to their offices and were met by fields upon fields! They are very proud of where they come from therefore we have come up with the tagline ‘A Taste of Crossgar’ as an important part of narrative of their brand. This brings in the origin of the product and also links to the taste of which is also developed in Crossgar.

The previous logo consisted of a cooked chicken and a wreath, similar to your traditional styled butchers, our creative studio updated this with a modern rounded typeface which gives connotations of friendly and approachability. We created a custom vector illustration of a chicken to match the rounded typeface. We have selected the colour scheme of a dark grey and light blue palette which gives a refreshing difference from their usual red and green branding. We have used the colour separation of the blue and white two toned logo for the GB and the Poultry text.

When we travelled to Crossgar we noticed the beautiful landscape around it, we captured this by creating a custom illustration of fields with trees, tractors and chickens in it that can be rolled across their branding. We used textures and muted colour palette for this to utilise the brand and the modern logo, they bring across the farm aspect of the brand. GB Poultry have several products requiring packaging design, this includes sauces, flash fried chicken and cooked chicken which flavours they create themselves. The flash fried chicken products are readily available from most local shops, make sure you try them out. We have visualised up three different types of products, sauces, salt & chilli chicken goujons and breaded chicken burgers using three different colour schemes to define the different products. The packaging is a sticker on the products which sit on shelf with all of their competitors therefore the bright colours of blues will stand out. The brand roll out includes tone of voice, business stationery, packaging, vehicle graphics and signage.

We greatly enjoyed working with Bell family on their brand refresh for GB Poultry and we are looking forward to seeing the packaging roll out and the well known vans on the road.

Belfast Mens Health Logo Design

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Belfast Men’s Health Group (BMHG) is made up a group of people across the community of Belfast and volunteer organisations across Northern Ireland, all with a strong interest in the health and well being of men, by raising awareness of all the main health issues relevant to men and sharing events of interest across Greater Belfast.

BMHG provide a range of information shared by experts who really are experts in their fields. Organising meet up events, provide videos, podcasts and even hosting competitions, they want men to really feel good about themselves and to look after others. BMHG want to make sure there is access to all the relevant information where ever you are.

In their words:

“Belfast Men’s Health Group is a made up of representatives across statutory, community and volunteer organisations across Belfast with a strong interest in the health and well-being of men. Each year we celebrate Men’s Health Week and International Men’s Health Day by organise events to raise awareness of health issues that are relevant to men. We also work with other agencies at other health events to raise further awareness. We are developing the work of the group and a website to further evidence of our ambitions.”

Initially approaching Kaizen Brand Evolution on a website, designed to help them share a range of media and information to a wider audience, our working relationship grew. After our first studio meeting, BMHG noticed our wall of clients and our portfolio of work, it was at this point they decided to rebrand their logo as they felt it was outdated, and it wasn’t communicating the tone of their current direction.

BMHG wanted a logo that worked along side the Northern Health and Social Care Trust branding, they wanted it look like a sub brand to the Northern Health and Social Care Trust and to feel like a brand you can really trust with some sensitive topics within the health and general well being of men.

Hoping to show people that they were a Belfast based organisation, whilst also hinting at what they stand for. They also didn’t want a logo that was too clinical, so this became our challenge to produce a mark, which would become instantly recognisable, corporate and memorable to men across Belfast.

We created a device using the B for Belfast, removing the counters and replacing with the cross for health. The colours are more of a muted blue, which when in use is quite corporate and masculine. The B+ device could be used as a window what information BMHG has to offer, the logo will work well online, email signatures, on t-shirts, beanies and also work on pop up banners, and flyers for events. The use of blue helps the logo have confidence, and feels trust worthy.

We are also creating a website for Belfast Men’s Health Group which will be their audience’s digital handbook for anything and everything they need to know about Men’s Health and well-being. The website will include a range of videos, podcasts, blogs and links to other websites in a visual and clear manner, to help men understand the importance of good health and uniting together. The site will be launching during Men’s Health Week in September 2018.

It will be great to see how their new logo will be used around Belfast, knowing they are helping Men across Greater Belfast.

Day & Age – Brand Development

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Day and Age, creators of short films, use video to make sure the little moments are never forgotten. Kathryn approached Kaizen Brand Evolution when she wanted to steer Day and Age in a new direction, when she wanted to hand her brand identity over to safe hands for an all over evaluation, and when she wanted to evolve her business.

Starting from a young age Kathryn was capturing videos for weddings, corporate insights and family events. Day and Age is now pushing forward to new areas of film, looking to create memorable films that become powerful memory aids. Focusing on making memories and treasuring each moment, whether it be for promotion or an event, a memory for someone that may forget, or even just to give as a gift – Kathryn creates the most beautiful and effective videos.

To display this evolution of the business, we took the Day and Age brand and re-focused it. A brand that will appeal to the current, the new, and the expanding target audience. Kathryn and ourselves agreed that that bold and fitting name of the business should remain, everything else we could assess, address and push in the right direction.  

Throughout the process, it was clear what Day and Age represented and what it would bring to each of its clients-memories. A Day and Age film would provide a beautiful memory aid and so much more. With memories, nostalgia and capturing the moment in mind, we came up with the suitable brand language that would surround the brand. The strapline ‘Memory Studio’ helped give definition to the name, explaining exactly what Day and Age is. They create memories and help you ‘Remember each day’.  

The brand identity itself was provided as a wordmark and an abbreviated device ‘D and A’ to apply throughout any brand extensions. We found the connection between the initials of the brand and term ‘DNA’ riveting. Day and Age’s main aim is to celebrate families and individuals, all about the ‘DNA’. Displaying this connection subtly through the abbreviated device meant the ‘Day and Age’ name still held prevalence.  The versatile device can be applied in many different ways to connect you directly back to the Day and Age name while highlighting the ‘DNA’ or ‘D and A’. We used the combination of a rounded and modern font to reflect personality, approachability and style, a brand that you would want to work with and trust.

The colour palette and imagery came naturally from the Day and Age films.  Using all stills from taken footage, we could see how well the brand would work. We applied a soft and neutral colour palette to compliment the brand identity, language and each film. Not to distract, but to honour the nature of the brand and each film. 

We are now seeing the brand come together to display a clear focus and direction, the direction that Day and Age were and are aiming for. The new Identity is tailored to evolving clients, through narrative, identity and finally the implementation, whilst still appealing to a greater audience. Day and Age creates memories, but it can also still cater to and appeal to any possible film seeking client.

We continue to work with Day and Age, rolling out their new brand across various different forms of stationery and promotional materials. The new brand is coming to life and complimenting all the great work that we are seeing from Day and Age. It is a pleasure to work with such elegant content and now a new brand that compliments that content. We look forward to seeing where the business and new brand goes from here.

Graze, Belfast – Brand Audit & Logo Refresh

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Graze is a restaurant based in Ballyhackamore, East Belfast. They love serving tasty little dishes (also know as tapas). These dishes are full of flavours using quality local produce, paired with your favourite wines. Graze is a great place to enjoy your tapas as they have created an atmosphere that is comfortable, friendly and the ideal place for people who just love great quality food and drink. Graze has made a name for themselves because of their special fish dishes, which change daily, based on the catch that morning.

In their own words:
“The Graze experience is about more than just food. A sincere effort to educate our staff on all aspects of food and wine culture is the basis for our service philosophy. We take great pride in our relaxed style of service and our welcoming staff at Graze go to great lengths to make diners feel at ease, comfortable and well taken care of.”

As well as the restaurant serving tapas & wine, Graze has the Lounge; soft lighting, with dark interiors and comfortable seating makes the Lounge feel relaxing. It’s known for their range of local Gins, craft beers and ciders.

Graze really know how to make your experience extra special; with their resident mixologist, who will make you some amazing drinks and cocktails.

Graze love their Gins so much they have their own Gin Club. Get involved in their monthly club where you can try 5 new gins, and shown how you can serve them up yourself.

Graze approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create a brand audit for their restaurant because they wanted a brand which was consistent, and reached a new audience of late 20’s early 30 year olds. Graze’s approach has always been simple, so we felt we needed to create a branding system, which would be easy to use. They will be able to use across all of their marketing for both online and offline. It had to be simple for them to use. It had to stand out from their competitors and it most of all had to be consistent.

To create a brand that really represents Graze and develop a brand identity really needed. The previous brand and the food didn’t pair well so we took inspiration from everything within Graze, from the dishes they serve to the colours used in the interiors of the restaurant.

The Graze brand combines a word mark with a personality, a popping friendly colour palette and referencing the tiles they have in their interior. We developed a tone of voice which is friendly, and sounds familiar, it reminds you to “Enjoy the little things” in life and to cherish those moments with friends, family and to be surrounded by great food and drink.

As well as the branding system we produced a range of visuals to show them how the brand could be used across different mediums; including work uniform (aprons and chef jackets), interior signage, exterior signage and menus.

I enjoyed working with Graze on this branding project; I can’t wait to see the branding all over social media and Ballyhackamore. I’d like to see Graze develop into a restaurant, where people come from all over to try their tapas and gin.

I hope Graze sets the mark for what tapas should really be all about.

Code Fixer – Branding

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Codefixer are a small web design and development company based on the Malone Road, Belfast. They design websites for a range of clients  across many different industries all over Ireland. Codefixer are one of the few companies that specialise in Google Ad words, SEO friendly websites and Analytics. Having this all under one roof helps give you the ultimate package for your business. They make the whole experience very easy for your business and needs.

In their own words:

“Codefixer offers a comprehensive range of first class web design and development solutions including e-commerce and WordPress, that coupled with our extensive skillset in SEO and Pay Per Click helps all types of websites punch above their weight.

Whether you are a small to medium sized business, a start-up to a multi million pound online business we’re confident that we can help you improve and get more of out your online business. Our success is due to our hunger to succeed and provide web solutions that exceed client expectations.”

Codefixer came to Kaizen Brand Evolution wanting a new look to their brand. The old brand was out-dated and didn’t match the professionalism and years of experience Codefixer had. It just looked cheap and amateurish and this was so far from the truth. In fact they have been in this industry for just over 15 years. Codefixer wanted a refreshing logo that would set them apart from the industry landscape. They needed to look like a professional web design studio who you want to look after your online presence. As being a company who works with the internet they are potentially competing in global market not just local. The current brand doesn’t do Codefixer and justice.

Our approach was to create a memorable logo, which is future-proof; we wanted it to say exactly what sector they were in without looking like your typical web design company. We created a logo that would easily develop into a brand with sub logos.

In the meantime it had to be a logo that covered all basis of what Codefixer do into an eye-catching design, which prominently worked across all screens from mobile devices to desktop.

The mark is a inspired by the language of code. A main object is written in square brackets ‘code’ followed by an instruction ‘fixer’ in this case. This language is written in lowercase (computers don’t understand uppercase). The [code]fixer mark can easily be written when the logo isn’t present on any device and will become instantly recognisable. The use of azure blue helps reach out to more corporate clients. This blue makes the business feel trust worthing and reliable.

The new logo will be used on social media, Linked In, their own website and possible print materials.

I believe the new mark will help them get the business and clients they want for their business.  The logo will be able to work well for training course and possible coding events in the future in Belfast and across Ireland.

 

Active Health – Brand Development

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Holywood based Active Health Solutions approached the team at Kaizen Brand Evolution to reposition their brand identity to tie in with their plans to build a new website and a re-fit to their facility on Hibernia Street. Investment into their online service and internal facilities sparked the requirement to refresh their entire brand identity from their logo mark to their brand purpose and narrative. Active Health Solutions required a fresh, contemporary brand audit that reflected their ambitions for the business and a brand that spoke to new and existing clientele.

In their own words:

We are a company of passionate health care professionals providing a holistic, multidisciplinary approach to healthcare from our bespoke clinic in Holywood, County Down. Our mix of services include Physiotherapy, Podiatry, Chiropody, Massage Therapy, Pilates, Personal Training, as well as the provision of Occupational Physiotherapy to a number of large companies and organisations across Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Active Health Solutions was started in 2006 by husband and wife team David & Rachel Saligari who are both are highly trained Musculoskeletal Physiotherapy Specialists who met while completing their Masters of Manual Therapy in Perth, Western Australia. They and their clinical staff pride themselves on providing the most up to date and evidence based treatments available. Whatever your requirements, you will be directed to the health care professional within the company with the expertise to solve your problems and achieve your goals.

Utilising their own description of Active Health Solutions we crafted a brand narrative and identity that would help re-position the business as market leaders, experts and forward thinkers. The first port of call was the logo mark itself. In a brand audit we retain and refresh rather that re-invent. This ‘refresh’ was a modern take on their existing mark, a contemporary word mark with considered typographic detailing using the ‘sportier’ glyphs found in ITC Avant Garde along with a simplistic ‘Plus’ brand device that the business can introduce as a nod to the health industry as well as reflecting that they are a physiotherapy business at the core “PLUS’ so much more. A key piece of the audit was also to remove the word ‘solutions’ from the primary brand mark – this decision came into play rather early in the design process, we felt that ‘solutions’ was too generic a word to describe the full set of services on offer at Active Health. This was an easy removal for the business owners as most clients refer to the business as ‘Active Health’.

We introduced the narrative ‘Activate your Health’ to use across all branded touch points both online an in print. Activate your health is a direct call to action for the brand and acts on its own as almost a sub brand for the business to use around the building, on advertising and in any promotional material they produce. With the logo mark and brand language set in place the colour palette and photography direction was next in completion of the brand audit. The colour palette reflects the previous branding, rather than using a primary lime green, we have introduced a pastel scheme to accompany a beautiful blue grey. The colour symbolises renewal and growth, addressing the key selling points of Active Health Solutions. The photography direction is focussed, dramatic and telling of the services carried out at Active Health – we wanted to move away from the traditional stock photography direction of clients smiling in a clinical environment, something that this market is saturated in. The imagery is much more though provoking and speciality focussed.

Active Health are currently working on refreshing their website with us, creating an informative, user friendly experience online, all reflective of their service in store.

Mongey Communications – Branding

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Mongey Communications tasked the Kaizen Brand Evolution studio with a full company rebrand of their hugely successful communications business based in Co. Kildare. The work that Mongey carry out is instantly recognisable across the island of Ireland with reach across audio and visual in some of the most prestigious sporting and high profile events across Ireland, not to mention their security communications and audio work. Mongey communications reputation is exceptional, however their brand identity was falling behind. We created a new brand purpose for the business including strong brand narrative, ident and brand vision for future growth and success.

In their own words:

Mongey Communications , founded by brothers David and Cyril Mongey is built on over 30 years worth of experience in the sound and communications market. Operating throughout Ireland, the company has the commitment, resources and experience needed to provide a comprehensive audio-visual and communications solution for any event, project or venue.

We have developed an enviable reputation in providing AV and communications solutions for the event industry in Ireland in the sporting, cultural and entertainment arenas.

We are experts at providing first rate audio-video solutions. This is our job. We have been doing this for the past 20 years at some of the biggest events Ireland has ever witnessed, from the hugely successful Ryder Cup in 2006 to all the rugby and soccer internationals in Landsdowne Road and Croke Park.”

Our first challenge was the name, we believed that the name Mongey stood alone in its own right as a recognisable name, so we decided to drop the ‘communications’ from the brand paving the way for a simple, clever mark. As we investigated further with narrative and storytelling for Mongey we introduced the ‘MORE” concept. More audio, More visual, More CCTV for example. This alliteration makes the Mongey name synonymous with More than communications. This new strapline also aids Mongey for growth and introduction of new technologies, which the company pride themselves on. Any new technique of communicating to audiences Mongey is an early adapter, from Walkie Talkies to drone work they are a progressive, contemporary business with focus on the future. All of these business attributes have been considered in the new branding for Mongey.

The new Mongey mark is very much an audit of the original abbreviation “MC” that they used as their brand identity for many years, we felt this was the best approach for the business, to recognise success by treating the logo mark as a contemporary 21st century brand system with modern values. The M becomes the device for the brand and evokes the sense of the Mongey personal touch. This personal ‘signature’ style was crucial in reflecting how the Mongey business is very much a family business, a subtle but relatable hint. The remaining word mark takes a very modern, structured approach. Increased kerning and valued space between letters in the mark improve its visibility on screen and in print. We have retained the original Mongey red palette and introduced a beautiful Teal palette to work alongside it, as well as a brand image library full of high impact, abstract photos. The photo direction is an important factor in the new Mongey brand as it propels Mongey as a stand out communications company. Competitors traditionally use images of their actual equipment, screens and speakers we have focused on the experience that Mongey brings to a project with bright, dramatic shots of fibre optics, close ups of audio systems and even high impact visuals of the types of events that Mongey has experience of working in.

The brand itself has extensive reach across Ireland which we as a studio are excited about, from Croke Park to Kingspan Stadium the Mongey brand is now prepared to soar across Ireland successfully. It was a pleasure to work on and we look forward to continuing the brand roll out across print and digital.

Poppogoblin

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Poppogoblin are a healthy focussed café/juice bar situated on Alfred St, Belfast. They have garnered a reputation for fantastic, delicious healthy alternatives for lunch and for having warm friendly staff that make the entire experience with Poppogoblin one to remember. The owners approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to re-position the branding for plans to refresh the business alongside an interior fit out and a unique Poppogoblin juice range. The businesses reputation an integral part of their offering, which became apparent in our own research into customer, reviews on trip advisor and the broad social media landscape. One thing that was reoccurring was the focus on how the customers where blown away by how friendly and lovely the staff were in Poppogoblin, which immediately set them apart from competitors and highlights their brand purpose. With the brand purpose in mind we made sure to include hints to the unique offering in their brand identity, narrative and tone of voice.

The brand mark itself reveals a smile in the typography, which is paired alongside a re-draw of their infamous lotus flower. The ‘smile’ in the typography immediately triggers a sense of positivity and the experience that Poppogoblin offers as a destination – you’re going to leave smiling. To balance the re-enforce the logo mark we introduced the strapline ‘eat smart, smile more’ – a strapline that sets the tone for the entire re-brand. You can now see as the brand launches in their signage, on their menus and even on their newly launched food truck – ‘eat smart, smile more’ is as dominant in the design as the logo itself, highlighting the power language can play on your brand.

Colour choice was a delight for Poppogoblin, healthy modern pastels we’ll call them help extend the brand reach to the modern diner without isolated a particular gender or mind-set. You can dine in Poppogoblin if you are vegan, veggie, and carnivore – any palette really so we kept the colour scheme open and friendly as to represent the brand purpose fully. Photography plays a role in telling the brand story of Poppogoblin to which we called upon one of our favourite Architectural, interior and food photographers Donal McCann. Donal’s shots extend the brand direction fantastically, capturing the warmth and friendly atmosphere as well as the beautiful food and drinks on offer.

Brand launch began some months ago in the background of the shop façade. Behind the scenes our team were building the full responsive website for Poppogoblin as well as preparing the social media channels for launch. The website utilises Donal McCann’s photo-shoot alongside beautiful typography, layout and brand placement. The full screen imagery on the site play a hug roll in telling the brand story and giving you a taste of the Poppogoblin experience on your desktop, on your mobile, anywhere really. We ensured that the brand roll out kept on track with the vision from the branding exercise. This extended into quality control with signage companies, interior fit out teams, vehicle wrap companies and juice bottle label manufacturers. We always like to keep a close eye on things as roll out happens, acting as full brand guardians as a brand starts to launch. This process and relationship with a brand extends our reach and expertise in the branding process and ensures that your investment in the brand is realised and achieved correctly as agreed.

Poppogoblin is a fantastic case study for us a brand designers, the brand itself highlights how every aspect of your brand can be considered for maximum purpose. The Poppogoblin brand identity, language and brand guidelines are all set in place for a bright future.

Boyd Rice Solicitors

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Directors Neil and Ben took the decision to rebrand an established firm Boyd Rice as they took control, naturally they spoke to us!  They wanted to stands out against competitors and announce that they have changed directorship. Boyd Rice aimed to protect their current client base by communicating that they were changing directors but would have the same values and assure them that the same service would prevail. Personal injury and family are their target clients, with this in mind we have explored a brand that is friendly, modern and trusted to secure this. Our mission for Boyd Rice Solicitors was to create a corporate brand identity and narrative which will show their clients and future clients that there has been a change in the firm, but the same principles remain.

The logo consists of highlighting the two surnames Boyd and Rice giving both equal importance but we have shown that they are two different names of the company by differentiating with colour tones. The logo is designed with a soft rounded typeface that symbolises trustworthy and approachability. The type solicitors is placed smaller underneath the BoydRice showing the hierarchy of the design. The ‘O’ in Boyd Rice has been designed with a small line underneath it. We have highlighted the ‘O’ in Boyd to symbolise the hammer in law. This clever ‘O’ will be brought out throughout the brand language and will be used as a brand device throughout. The ‘O’ device has been a key representation of the brand being brought through for all language and the four brand pillars.

We have used a two tone colour scheme of navy and turquoise as they are rich bright colours, but are approachable for the clients target audience which is personal injury claims. We have also brought into the logo design a wall texture to show hidden depth to the logo. Due to the corporate nature of the solicitors the photography is suitably paired, we have chosen photography that is peaceful and relatable to Boyd Rice’s customers, showing family enjoying time together, law buildings and signing paperwork.

We have used iconography and sourced imagery for each of the main brand pillars; personal injury, conveyancing & property, matrimonial & family and probate & wills which symbolise each department with a caring image that has been chosen to represent each pilar. The language ‘On your Side’ represents Boyd Rice’s messaging to be there for there clients, it is matched with photography of family to target their main audience. ‘On Your Side’  language as solicitors is a positive message that they are on their clients side and there for them, it is encouraging for client and solicitors as it adds a personal touch with the word ‘your’ which immediately engages the viewer and will attract new clients for Boyd Rice.

The brand has been visualised onto aspects that Boyd Rice Solicitors would use in everyday activity, these include business cards, stationery, window signage, pop up banners and folders. We have ensured that the colour palette and branding has been brought throughout all of the aspects as well as the ‘On your Side’ messaging to strength the brand with consistency.

We enjoyed working on Boyd Rice creating a modern, but approachable brand identity for them. We created the brand highlighting these key points of corporate identity for the Solicitors firm and also taking into account the firms key audience of family which we made the brand also friendly. We look forward to working with Boyd Rice on their brand roll out with their launch which we will be designing business cards, letterheads, email signatures and any of their other needs.

Evolve your business with design thinking #ImWithTheBrand

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Design solves business problems; it’s that simple.

Struggling to reach your target audience? Join us for the 4th event in our #ImWithTheBrand series, where we’ll take you through our full design process and help you grow your business with design thinking.

This workshop will introduce you to the tools to build and evolve, showing you how to bring a brand to life, both online and offline, adding value to your business.

Design thinking enables you to identify unique selling points of a business, identify key messages, generate stand out marketing campaigns and develop the overall ethos and goals of your business to allow for growth. These tools can be used to build, revitalise and strengthen any brand, from start ups to large corporations.

This event is perfect for owners of local start up businesses and established SMEs, and marketing/business development professionals who would like to see their businesses grow and thrive.

The workshop takes place on Jan 19th from 8am until 10am, at The Academy Restaurant in Ulster University. Early bird tickets are £5 until Jan 3rd (£8 after this date). If you’d like to book a place, you can buy tickets using the form below.

Speakers

Ryan Stanfield – Design Director at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Ryan leads the branding team that create and manage some of Ireland and the UK’s most recognised brands. After numerous years in branding agencies, Ryan has learnt that designing for the client, building relationships and getting to the core of the business is key when undertaking any brief. His creative take on the branding process enables him to build brands that present the core values and mission of a business in visual form. His unique approach delivers deep meaningful change across our clients businesses, brands come to us when they want results.

Lizi Daley – Digital Designer at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Lizi pushes the envelope with functionality online while keeping the user in mind at all times. Her approach to design focuses on user experience and engaging content, which always results in a positive impact on the bottom line of our client’s businesses. As well as interpreting the brand message to digital format, Lizi also offers training on functionality and purpose so that clients are fully equipped to get the best from their online presence. Online conversion is core to any business, acting as an extension to your sales team.

1 to 1 Sessions

Connor McAuley will also be hosting 1 to 1 brand consultations after the speakers as part of the event. If you would like to book a consultation, please contact us here.

Connor McAuley – Managing Director at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Connor has been in the business of design and marketing for over 16 years and as the industry landscape changes and adapts so does Connor’s technique. Under Connor’s leadership Kaizen Brand Evolution has grown from a small Ireland focused studio to a much larger business working with major international, national and regional clients in London, Dublin, and Belfast. Connor’s ability to get under the skin of a businesses core beliefs enables him to advise of how best to reach markets and communicate effectively.

Backlash Burger

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Backlash is a brand new culinary offering in Belfast, serving up the meatiest, freshest burgers paired with beautiful craft beer and ale, what more could you ask for? Backlash is exciting new venture from local food tycoon Gary McIldowney that aims to focus on great burgers with an exciting dining experience to-boot. The dining experience at Backlash will transport you to a contemporary, urban landscape where burgers are king and craft beer pairings with every unique flavour. The Backlash restaurant is a modern take on 80’s burger joints with urban interiors, music and overall ‘cool’ vibe.

Our mission for the Backlash brand was to bring the urban vibe and culture into the identity and narrative. We explored a myriad of contemporary and vintage urban style fonts and typographic techniques as well as the bold colour palettes of late 80’s and 90’s hip-hop. What we created is a blend of all our research and development into the urban/burger & beer culture. The identity comprises of layered, contemporary type with an eye-catching Neon Pink colour scheme. In order for the identity to be justified we developed a clever narrative for the brand – taking inspiration from a classic Tupac Shakur song “Backlash – home to 3 of Belfastz most wanted – burgers, beer and shakes.” With this in place we were ready to begin exploring plays on relevant words and phrases such as ‘HIP HOPS” for craft beer campaigns and “BUN DMC” for burger campaigns and posters. This introduction of clever, witty language sets the Backlash brand apart from the traditional burger joints in Northern Ireland, developing a sense of ‘coolness’ when engaging with the brand. This idea of ‘cool’ is developed and visualised throughout their interiors, menus and uniforms. We proposed that staff were snapback baseball caps with dark denim aprons. Backlash is a young brand at heart however nostalgia is introduced through language and audio in the restaurant which sets to attract the 30-40 year old market, harking back to their years of breakdancing and 90’s hip hop.

With the language and identity up and running we began work on the menus, loyalty cards and website to act as the initial brand collateral for Backlash, preparing them for launch. The menu is reflective of the proposed interiors for the restaurant, focussing on strong, striking patterns with a contemporary, stark layout. Colour palettes begin to flourish though out the printed materials with bold greens, pinks and blues (echoing the forefathers of urban culture). We also introduced a set of brand iconography for Backlash that reflects the urban, contemporary theme. This set of illustrations comprises of a burger, a lightning bolt and a beer bottle and acts as an extra brand mascot to be used on the reverse of menus and loyalty cards. The illustrated iconography is planned for way-finding systems across the restaurant interiors and on the website as well as use across a series of homemade sauces to accompany your burgers.

The Backlash brand identity is contemporary, trendy yet timeless, bright and eye-catching, all of the attributes of the business ambition at the beginning of the project. This identity highlights how important ambition setting is for a business. Knowing who you are, whom you are here for and how you are going to do it are essential questions for any business in order to reach their ambition. We look forward to working with Backlash more and more as they prepare for launch in store and online. On the run up to launch we will be developing their social media strategy and working to finalise menus, loyalty cards and the new website.

 

 

The Skinny Sauce Company

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The Skinny Sauce Company approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create an engaging brand identity and packaging strategy for the launch of their exciting new Skinny Sauce product range. The brand story begins with the owner and entrepreneur Maria Doran. Maria’s passion for sauce has been long standing; from ketchup to curry she has always loved adding flavour to her meals to enhance the eating experience. Maria also embraces the healthy lifestyle, going to the gym, eating right and taking care of herself. She soon realised that despite eating healthy she craved the added flavour that the sauces and dips brought to her meals and the sauces available on the market were full of sugars, additives and unhealthy ingredients in general. Maria’s mission is to revolutionise the sauce market and make healthy dips and sauces for the health conscious consumer.

With this in mind be researched the industry and developed a strategy for the business with the tagline ‘skinny dip more often.’ This strapline acted as the foundation for the creation of her brand identity and packaging. Keeping the target audience (health conscious shoppers who crave sauce) in mind we designed a bold, eye-catching brand that highlights the good ingredients that go into Skinny Sauces. In a world of Heinz and other well-known sauce brands we aimed to reach Maria’s ambition of becoming a household name and compete and stand out on the shelves in major retailers.

The first point of call was the brand mark. We crafted a ‘handmade’ type based logo with a bright, youthful colour palette, which immediately stands out from the competitors. The logo is a reaction to modern brand styles and trends utilising hand drawn type and illustration to reflect the fun skinny sauce experience. The brand mark leads nicely into how we visualise the brand narrative ‘skinny dip more often’ – using the hand drawn script and bold palette to emphasise the text. The language plays an important role in communication the values and vibrancy of the product. Aimed at an audience of 25-35 we have tailored the brand to fit in with that demographics lifestyle. As well as the language and the brand mark we proposed a photographic and typographic direction that would spark an emotional and aspirational connection with the target audience, using young, happy, healthy models to communicate this rings true in the Skinny Sauce marketing strategy and in their brand collateral.

Following the identity, strategy and narrative and artistic direction we began work on the packaging for the Skinny Sauces themselves. Each bottle and flavour introduces a fresh colour palette creating an engaging, eye-catching suite of products. One ambition for the packaging was to make it look suited alongside the likes of high-end sauces within M&S or Waitrose. This ambition was easily realised following the identity and artistic direction for the brand. We were able to utilise the type direction and layout to suit such retailers and realise the ambition for future growth and perhaps buyer in such retail environments. As well as the colour palette for each flavour of Skinny Sauce we introduced hand-drawn illustrations to reflect the core ingredients inside the bottle – beautiful hand-drawn chilli’s, peppers, tomatoes were included to create an all round flavour focussed packaging piece.

In preparation for the Skinny Sauce Company brand launch we worked alongside Maria to ensure that the values set out from the beginning would be strengthened and represented fully in the collateral and packaging. Working as brand guardians for Skinny Sauces we continue to develop and evolve this unique, beautiful brand to ensure the businesses ambitions are realised. We thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and look forward to working more with the Skinny Sauce Company in the future.

Punchestown Racecourse

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Punchestown approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to perform a re-brand for their established and celebrated racecourse and entertainment venue. We re-positioned the Punchestown brand by creating an engaging narrative and strategy for the business. With focus on the new ‘Town’ campaign we developed a suite of versatile straplines to use across the new brand roll out and marketing campaigns.

The Punchestown Festival is considered amongst the Racing community as the equivalent to the Wimbledon of Tennis and the Augusta of Golf. The best of the best from far and wide and the entire annual racing season compete at Punchestown. The sheer audience and exposure of the Punchestown brand provided the need to keep their identity and advertising fresh and representative of their unique offering.

There is a deep history at Punchestown Racecourse, which helped immensely in the craft of the brand narrative, from the famous horses, trainers and events that have taken place there is much more than meets the eye at Punchestown. The racecourse is not only synonymous with racing, there is so much more to the venue, from music festivals, corporate catering, family days, hospitality and new years celebrations to name a few.

We felt that the best way for us to communicate the wider offering was to generate a campaign that’s going to be immediately representative of the brand and evoke the emotions and sense that you feel when attending events at the racecourse. This is where the “TOWN” campaign was born. Developing the campaign narrative from the courses namesake, presented potential mileage for the brand and its campaigns immediately and it seemed like an organic development for the branding. With the TOWN campaign decided upon we generated a suite of potential Irish colloquialisms, sayings and relative straplines that would become the driving force behind the new brand identity. ‘Get out of town’ was a saying that marries a few points at once, which we explored on launch.

The idea of getting out of Dublin Town to visit Punchestown is the initial response to this phrase, however we’ve blended a traditional Irish colloquialism in the messaging “get out of town’ also gets used when you’re surprised to hear or see something. i.e. ‘I got a new Ferrari handed to me by my boss’ – the response would be “get out of town’. So the narrative bar was set, to communicate on two levels and engage vocally through the brand materials.

With the narrative and strategy in place we could work the craft of the logo and brand materials. The logo, which features the Punchestown Fox (identifiable through the years across each variation their brand history) has been brought into the 21st century with the use of a fresh new type family and custom fox mascot, who sits neatly above the TOWN letters, harking back to the narrative and campaign messaging.

We introduced a contemporary colour palette for the brand, keeping yet improving on the notorious Punchestown red we added a seasonal suite of colours to be used across the festival graphics, easily identifiable with the likes of Spring, Summer, Autumn Winter festival days. The colour flexibility has really strengthened the brand materials and creates an immediate association with a time of year at Punchestown. Primary colours explore pairings that compliment the Punchestown red, gold and a deep navy.

Once the brand elements are married together it is clear to see the visual results of the successful re-brand, which now addresses the ambition of Punchestown as a business. The new brand identity and campaigns stand out from their local and national competitors. Everything from the strategy, narrative, identity, implementation and management of the brand has been considered and carefully treated to ensure absolute success as the brand evolves. We absolutely loved working on this brand as a studio and we continue to work with Punchestown as brand guardians and as the racing seasons come around.

Giant serviced apartments

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Giant Property approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to brand their Serviced Apartments business. Offering some of the best locations across Northern Ireland and Belfast Giant Serviced Apartments where established online running under the Giant Property brand identity. As the business evolved and reach increased they felt it needed its own brand presence and came into the studio to outline their ambitions for the company.

The first goal of Giant Serviced Apartments was to be instantly recognisable as a standalone serviced apartments brand, standing apart from their competitors and raising confidence in clients who book through the likes of Air bnb and Booking.com so that Giant Serviced Apartments website gives them the confidence that they will receive the same level of service booking directly rather than through a third party.

We created the narrative ‘stay happy’ for Giant Serviced Apartments positioning them as business that provides a positive, friendly, happy service when staying at any of their apartments across Northern Ireland. This narrative was the foundation that we utilised in creating the unique brand identity and logo device. The logo is a bold, contemporary yet soft typeface with the addition of a ‘Giant Smile’ on the loop of the G. The Smile justifies the positive reviews currently featured on trip advisor and Giant Serviced apartments social media channels. This seamless transition of type into simplistic iconography showcases the strength of the brand mark. As part of the marketing collateral and brand rollout we have adapted the smile icon to house messaging, frame imagery and business stationery. Simplistic and versatile branding is always a goal when creating an identity system for a business and we have achieved this through Giant Serviced Apartments new brand positioning. As well as the dynamic logo created for Giant Serviced Apartments we introduced a fresh, engaging colour palette removing the brand from the current industry landscape of Serviced Apartments in Northern Ireland – subdued in corporate tones.

Photography plays a large role in the branding for Giant Serviced Apartments. We collated an image bank of modern, seasonal and fun photographs, which set the scene for tourists and customers wishing to travel to Northern Ireland. The image bank is in keeping with the tourism in Northern Ireland as well as the buzz of our cities and town’s nightlife and hospitality offerings. To coincide with the dynamic imagery for Giant Serviced Apartments we brought together the brand pillars of the business and adapted the ‘Stay’ message to work with them. At Giant Serviced Apartments their goal is for each and every customer to stay happy, comfy and curious. These three pillars immediately connect with the target market and aim to sum up their reasoning for choosing a location like Northern Ireland to travel to and stay with Giant Serviced Apartments. Strategically we are able to introduce this language set into all brand marketing materials, ads, brochures and online collateral – without the hard sell. The language was introduced to connect and engage with travelling clients on their level without screaming from the rooftops about offers or seasonal pricing we have focussed on the offering with an emotional language connection.

From signage to water labelling the new brand purpose flexes its muscles across all collateral in a very visual and engaging way. The language provides the tone of voice that you would connect with when travelling on business or leisure – signing off with the line ‘leave with a Giant smile’ when you are checking out solidifies the brand strategy and showcases its strength and marriage of logo, language and longevity.

It was a pleasure to work on the Branding for Giant Serviced and as it is currently rolling out of the studio keep an eye out for the Giant smile across Northern Ireland.

Watch Tech

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Watch Portfolio Management is a well-established business specialising in financial guidance with many clients reaching from the UK to Australia. Watch Portfolio Management is based in Lisburn, Northern Ireland, and is known for their financial advice that leads businesses that have gone into insolvency to find solutions. This, however, is no longer the case! Watch Portfolio Management decided they would approach Kaizen Brand Evolution to create an identity for their cutting edge software, that they primarily would use for daily tasks, as going forward they would like to be seen as a financial software business. This software is to be called Watch Tech. The interface is easy to use and finds information fast making it the best financial insolvency software on the market.

To creating the brands identity we needed to first fully understand the industry landscape that Watch Tech would be positioning itself alongside. We researched and developed clear directions to take our brand ideas based on Watch Tech’s potential competitors in the financial, security and tech sectors. Learning from our research we found what was working and what wasn’t necessarily relevant moving forward with the creation of Watch Tech’s identity. It became clear that a simple, modern identity would be best to represent this brand effectively.

Now that our styling has been determined from our research the identity soon followed. A potential branding direction that we explored was revitalising Watch Portfolio Managements shield to link Watch Tech to it’s heritage, as well as to show the software’s strength and durability when it comes to protecting your financial well being. However, the brand chosen to represent Watch Tech was our identity representing “financial growth”. This mark, illustrating a positive outlook, is a meaningful graphic that lends itself to the company’s primary objective for its clients. The brand mark uses three primary bars linked by two diagonal bars in the background giving a ribboning effect to shape into a “W” ultimately representing Watch Tech. Looking back on our research we decided to use a corporate typeface in a variety of weights to blend with our modern brand mark. This typeface joined with our brand mark comes together to create our Watch Tech Logo.

Following the design of the brands elements we were able to focus more on what our brands message would be. Watch Tech is really the first financial insolvency software to come onto the market and we decided “Pioneering financial insolvency software” would be a good direction for their brand language. Our taglines to follow this direction are “faster, stronger.” and “better, smarter.” to illustrate how superior this software is in comparison to other financial insolvency software’s and its main selling points the software can provide. Leading from this language our imagery shows the idea of exploration and moving forward to illustrate Watch Techs brand message.

With our logo and language already decided the next step in our process is to show our strategy in regards to how the logo would be implemented. The new Watch Tech logo is a strong shape with distinguishing features making it recognisable individually. It’s because of this that we decided to use the outlined shape of the brand mark as a device to house imagery. Imagery on print, signage and online would follow this strategy or be full bleed with the brand mark positioned accordingly alongside our brand messages. We didn’t just create a new brand identity for a piece of software we created a new platform and style for a new business to follow going forward.

The Cookie Jar

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The Cookie Jar is a well-established bakery situated in the beautiful surroundings of the Mourne Mountains. Since 1965 The Cookie Jar have been baking some of the country’s best known breads and sweet treats, from Wheaten bread to Soda bread, Fruit Bannock and beyond they have built on their Grandmothers fame across Northern Ireland and kept true to her original recipes. To this day owner James has kept every recipe his grandmother created the same, as they were in the 60’s – a testament to the quality of the products. From their premises in Newcastle, County Down The Cookie Jar noticed that there was high demand for their traditional Irish baking outside of the bakery shop and across the world. Ex-pats living in Australia, America and Europe seek the traditional baked taste of home and The Cookie Jar was happy to help. The power to re-create your favourite Wheaten, Soda, Scones and much more from your home, no matter where you are in the globe spawned the idea of ‘Bake your own’ – The Cookie Jar’s solution, in the form of ingredient packages. The ingredients simply need water and oil added in order to re-create the beautiful taste of home, still with James’ Grandmothers original recipe. With increased interest and success of selling and shipping the ‘Bake your own’ model required a brand identity as well as some packaging design.

In creating the brand identity we needed a narrative for the brand that immediately told the brand story before a logo or package is seen. How do we sum up a traditional bakery that is famous for their product in Newcastle, Co. Down – Mourne and Bread. Mourne and Bread is the lead narrative that sets the foundation for the brand identity and tone of voice. Mourne and Bread addresses the surroundings in which the bread is created and recognises the tradition and nod to being ‘born and bred’ in the Mournes.

Now that we have the narrative the identity would soon follow. We created a brand mark that remembers the old identity through a revised wheat icon as well as bringing the texture of the work surfaces in the bakery to the type design. The textured type instantly tells the tale of the bakery and once paired with the new, improved colour palette the entire mark communicates as a fresh, contemporary identity. We created both stacked and horizontal logotypes for versatility across the branding both in print, signage and online.

Marketing and promotion for The Cookie Jar allowed us to build upon the narrative, copy and art direction – from ‘Mourne and Bread’ to ‘up here it’s bread into us’ and gorgeous, epic shots of the Mournes and dramatic bread shots the branding, when pieced together is very powerful.

Following the design and marriage of all branding elements we were able to focus on how the ‘Bake your own’ packaging would appear. Taking into account the direction of marketing material and storytelling across the brand we wanted this to continue. Utilising the ‘Bake your own’ theme we designed the packaging to reflect the homemade feel and resonate with the ‘crafty’ audience who would be baking the breads and mixes. We introduced scenic Mourne illustrations and photography to the package design as well as a contemporary ‘way-finding’ icon set to be used as the product list develops.

We not only got to develop a fantastic brand identity and strategy but we also had the pleasure of creating some of the delicious breads and scones in the studio. The ingredient bags make it so easy and believe me the results are delicious – personally I had the Wheaten Bread and Scones and both are incredible, highly recommend you try out The Cookie Jar.

 

 

Jane McClenaghan

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Jane McClenaghan owner of Vital Nutrition – Northern Irelands leading nutrition and healthy lifestyle brand approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create an identity for herself in preparation for Jane’s evolution as a leading, national healthy lifestyle consultant. Jane has featured as part of Centra’s most recent influencer campaign and has appeared on BBC and numerous Food events across the province. Jane’s ambition is to be the figurehead for healthy living and nutrition, increasing her media coverage and crafting her ‘influencer’ brand presence.

The first step in the creative process was to fully understand the industry landscape that Jane aims to position herself as a stand-alone influencer. We researched and developed clear brand narratives based on Jane’s ambition and potential competitors in the healthy living/eating arena. Learning what is working and not necessarily working for some of the top brands was extremely important in the creation of Jane’s brand. As well as retaining the brand name ‘Jane McClenaghan’ we wanted to explore further options for her as a business, much like the way some influencers use nick names or brand names to trade under. Names such as Zoella, I Quit Sugar and Little Green Spoon have achieved major success from this approach. As one branding option we renamed Jane and presented her with “Nutrijane” as a potential brand direction – using this naming we seen potential for a clever brand strategy which would position her brand alongside the ‘quirky’ engaging names out there. In the end we stuck with Jane McClenaghan and plan to use Nutrijane throughout the brand emails and possible URL for her new website – so no idea un-used.

We designed a contemporary brand system for Jane McClenaghan to use across all of her marketing material both on and offline. We introduced a leaf to the word mark using negative space in the A to achieve instant brand recognition – summing up Jane’s offering and business objectives. Simplicity is the best policy here and when applied to type the negative space really speaks volumes for the entire brand identity. The logo itself positions the brand on the higher end of online influencers such as HEMSLEY + HEMSLEY, and Deliciously Ella which immediately resonates with Jane’s target audience. The unique blend of classic typography and clever brand language pulls the brand together in an engaging, visual fashion. We introduced a bold colour palette that reflects Jane’s colourful personality as well as the visually attractive meal plans she creates at events and on her online webinars. Taking influence from the bright palette of some of the key ingredients she like to use mirrors throughout the brand not just in her logo but in her very own, custom brand iconography set which will feature as a way finding system throughout her cookbook design and her website.

We created Jane’s brand language and tone of voice to reflect her offering in a clever concise way. Statements like “Health to thrive” and “I’m here for the good of your health” have spawned from the creative writing process for the brand. When married together the brand language and logo mark successfully tell her brand story.

Following the identity and language creation we implemented the branding on a number of deliverables that Jane has plans to release over the coming months as the brand is launched. From cookbook designs to event design and branded collateral for conferences we visualised how successful the identity can be across all of her needs with the colour palette and brand language constantly making an appearance, strengthening the identity as a whole.

It was a pleasure to work on the branding for Jane and we look forward to the roll out as she continues to evolve and increase her brand reach. Next phase is realising her new website and social media channels.

Telling your brand story

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Every brand meet we have with a client or potential client focuses on one theme: Telling your story! Whether you are a nutritionist, a pet food manufacturer, a restaurant owner or a marketing manager, it’s our job to help you bring your brand, product or service’s story to life through amazing creative design, for print and the digital world.

Telling your brand story isn’t easy. It takes consideration and clarity of objective. It must help you address key business issues and overcome objections. It must focus all business stakeholders on a single message and support them in their daily activities, regardless of their position in your business.

So what is your brand story? Are you telling it right? How do you know if you’re wrong?

Our brand story

“We are a creative design agency in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We specialise in brand identity, graphic design and web design.”

But a brand goes far beyond a few words written down. It must embody a culture within a business and the purpose that the business has in it’s market.

“Our unique approach delivers deep meaningful change across our clients businesses.”

Creative design can be utilised in every facet of your business to promote growth or to focus on productivity enhancements, better user experience or clarity of business objectives.

This morning I was invited to the BBC to video some footage for their “Make It” mentor videos. The projects aim is to improve aspiration, expectation and confidence in young people, young males in particular, aged 16-24, whilst delivering employability, careers resources and pathways into training and employment.

In developing the content, I focused on my own brand story and the message I wanted to portray to those watching the video. What challenges I overcame as a business owner and where I am today?

My brand story

I’m a 34 year old husband and father, as well as a business owner here in Belfast. Kaizen started from our back bedroom with the aim of helping businesses with their marketing through design and printed materials. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and even in school I would have been the person selling sweets from their locker. I love business and love coming to work each day.

Down Royal Racecourse – Brand Audit

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We’ve been working closely with The Down Royal Racecourse over the past few years creating engaging advertising campaigns, race festival materials and digital ads. On the run up to the 2017 Summer Festival the Down Royal Racecourse approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to conduct a Brand Audit. Having had their identity for some time they felt that it was time for a refresh, to increase engagement with current clients and potential customers alike. We were well versed in the reach of the Down Royal’s marketing and the potential there to make a real difference to the bottom line of the business through clever brand strategy.

Auditing the Down Royal Racecourse brand and identifying how we could best position the business in the entertainment marketplace required focussed research and development from the studio. We explored how competitors sell entertainment as well as sport focussed strategies.

Our first point of call was the Down Royal mark itself. We decided to re-draw the horse icon giving it more depth and substance as well as a contoured texture representative of the racetrack. Using the previous colour palette we added a gradient to each fetlock on the horse then applied the texture. Once the icon was refreshed the type mark below required a contemporary type family to set the brand apart. With both elements in place the new logo mark had to now marry with a clever advertising campaign. This is when we introduced the abbreviated ‘DR’ (Down Royal) concept.

DR has always been a term I have identified with the Down Royal growing up near the racecourse and re-introducing it seemed the natural thing to do. With DR in place for a stream of AD’s we crafted some key copy that was synonymous with the Down Royal Racecourse, Drama, Dress up, Dream and Drink all versatile one-word descriptors of the offer at the Racecourse. The copy provided a solid foundation for the design with one key element always highlighted – the DR.

With the new logo & new campaign direction decided upon the next step was to create visuals that married with the type. For this we sourced high impact portraits, isolated on white. This single image would back up the campaign messaging and allow for a brand new secondary colour palette. We chose a striking portrait of a horse to portray Drama and a glamorous girl at the races to work with Dress up. The secondary colour palette is a fantastic, bold palette far removed from the primary gold’s in the previous identity. The new palette lifts the brand into 2017, stepping away from tradition and engaging with new audiences. The DR campaign will evolve across the Down Royal complex as well as their marketing material. Way finding systems in the complex are very important and utilising the DR campaign for the likes of the Bar areas is going to re-enforce the brand even further. Highlighting the DR across all touch points across the business will breed association with the brand even in instances where the logo mark itself does not appear. This clear, clever strategy set by the Kaizen Brand Evolution studio breathes confidence across the whole brand identity and is evidence of the power of a brand audit.

The first roll out of the ad campaign was for the Ulster Tatler and Business Eye Magazine (out now) as double page spreads. The identity will be rolled out as a soft launch across all of the Down Royal’s marketing material and brand touch points.

If you feel your brand requires an audit to really bring out the best in your business please feel free to get in touch and arrange an appointment with one of our senior brand experts.

Loco Pizza

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Loco approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create a contemporary brand identity, menus, website and interior graphics for their fresh new pizza place situated in the East Point Entertainment Village, Dundonald. Loco’s mantra ‘mad about pizza’ highlights their passion for great tasting, hearty pizza. Not just your run of the mill pizza joint, Loco aims to cater for the masses. No matter how you like your pizza fix Loco caters for groups, parties, children’s parties, take away, table service and walk ins all which are welcome come lunch or dinner. Boasting a range of non-pizza items such as burgers, wings, salads & dessert pizza’s they’ve got you covered whatever your preference.

With all things considered and the target audience identified we created a brand identity that is fun, engaging and a bit mad. Textured, disjointed type flows through the Loco brand reinforcing the strapline ‘mad about pizza’ and with the addition of a brand language sporting slogans such as ‘in pizza we crust’ we created a platform for an engaging tone of voice. The branding balances hand-made design and modern graphics successfully, establishing the business as the stand out Pizza offering in Northern Ireland. Our research and development into Pizza restaurant branding provided some obvious results such pizza illustrations and Italian themes. We wanted to create a brand that was unique and one that would stand out amongst the crowd. When you visit Loco you will not see an Italian flag or any cliché pizza illustrations featured in the interiors or menus. The owners came to Kaizen Brand Evolution to create something different, an identity that would stand the test of time and one that customers could easily buy in to.

As well as the new logo mark and brand identity for Loco we created all aspects of the brand roll-out for launch such as the menus, website (coming soon), interior way finding system, window graphics, social media posts, napkin designs, table toppers, loyalty cards, over-bags, pizza boxes, receipts, t-shirts and custom wallpaper for the interiors. Loco have a great understanding of the importance of branding and utilising the team at Kaizen Brand Evolution as their brand guardians. We offer this service to all of our clients and when it comes to rolling out branding we, as the creators of the brand can oversee any aspects of print and digital materials that may be needed.

A key element of the Loco brand is the new website which we are completing as I write this blog post. We have focussed on the user experience for the design of the Loco site, creating a one-page site where most content can be viewed through a scroll of the mouse as soon as you land on the site loco.pizza. Utilising the stunning food photography of Fergus Jordan at White Cloud Photographic we created the site with the vision of prioritising the mobile experience following research into the users preference when visiting restaurant sites 80% of which where viewed on mobile. This knowledge then sets the precedent for the likes of portrait imagery, clean, concise typography and user interface design that is visually engaging. We look forward to the roll out of the site across mobile and desktop in the up and coming weeks.

It was a pleasure working on the branding and roll out of Loco and as another hospitality brand features in the Kaizen Brand Evolution portfolio we are excited for the future of Northern Irelands eateries. From our experience branding some of the countries leading hospitality brands, Northern Ireland has so much to offer whatever your taste and Loco is certainly top of the list when it comes to Pizza!

www.Loco.pizza

Branding The Future

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We were approached by Adam / Founder and Director of the Future 17 Conference to develop a new brand identity and strategy for the up and coming tech conference for teens. Future was born out of frustration at the lack of tech events aimed at teenagers and was therefore created with the sole aim of inspiring the next generation of tech leaders.

After their first event, which hosted speakers from TIME’s list of most influential teens, they are now hosting Future17, a one-day tech conference and hackathon that aims to inspire Northern Ireland’s teenagers to get more involved in the tech industry. By using a unique model and organising a tech conference around a hackathon, they ensure that attendees get the most from this experience: not only will they be able to develop their skills first-hand by ‘hacking’ together a product, but they will also receive talks from some of the leading people in the technology industry today. The ultimate aim of the event is not only to inspire the next generation of tech leaders but also to make teens see code as more than lines and squiggles on a screen and appreciate it for the magic that it is. This founder has his sights set on a number of high-profile digital superstars to lead the conference to be held in the Titanic Building, Belfast.

We set the new Future 17 tone of voice around the primary mission of ‘developing greatness’ which symbolises the over arching theme of the event, inspiring the future of tech and digital/online developers. In keeping with the younger, teen target audience we aimed to create a brand identity that communicated effectively with this age group as well as potential sponsors. Adam, the founder has already secured solid investment from the likes of Twitter, Kainos and the MCS Group, all championing this growing industry in Northern Ireland. With this in mind, we created a clever brand mark utilising the ascender in the ‘F’ device with it’s own speech bubble mark. This subtle device speaks volumes across all marketing material on and offline. It immediately visualises the essence of the talks at the conference and is easily adapted across the brand.

As well as the primary ‘F’ mark we introduced an additional, more fluid ‘F’ device built from a data map concept. This secondary ‘F’ is used across the brand in more abstract, high impact fashion. The founder of Future 17 thought that this additional device spoke volumes across marketing material and liked how versatile it became when rolled out across the conference graphics on stage and delegate material. All in all, there are two key components to this brand, the contemporary primary brand mark using the speech bubble in the F Ascender and the ‘Data Map’ F which adapts the playful, secondary colour palette.

In keeping with the contemporary brand identity, we introduced Calibre as the brand typeface. The surge of circular typefaces in 2016 has been incredible and this one in particular fitted perfectly with the Future 17 ident, clean, concise, on trend. The supporting imagery with the Future 17 brand was chosen to inspire and intrigue, high impact scenic photography of skylines and the night sky symbolising the potential of the delegates and their future impact in tech.

We are extremely pleased with the final branding of the Future 17 conference and look forward to the roll out as the build up begins for 2017. Here’s to the future of tech in Northern Ireland. If you are interested in attending the Future 17 conference please follow the link below for tickets and any further information. http://www.future17.co/

Collaborating & creating with Down Royal Racecourse

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The Down Royal Racecourse has long been a stage for some of the most exciting spectacles in Northern Ireland, and this is exactly what we try to capture when we produce work for them.

One of the most exciting projects we have worked on with the team at Down Royal is their upcoming Festival of Racing, taking place on the 5th and 6th of November. This project was a culmination of joint efforts between the teams at Titanic Belfast and Victoria Square in getting us the source material to work with and us here at Kaizen Brand Evolution in bringing everything together into an informative and communicative piece of design.

We created the look and feel for the campaign with two goals in mind, and that was to excite and intrigue. The collage of images comes together to tell a story of equal parts, seamlessly joining The Down Royal Racecourse with the two main sponsors of the event, Titanic Belfast and Victoria Square. The horses jumping from one building to another are the visual link between the two giants of Northern Irish culture, and create a perfect basis to build our campaign upon. Once we had the visual style established, we started work on producing everything that was required for the event, from an in-depth festival brochure design, online and social media adverts right the way through to large format print campaigns that can be seen around Belfast and further afield.

The brochure consists of a full race schedule with an in-depth look at all the scheduled races and their individual history, as well as information and history about the racecourse itself. Information about the suites available for rent was also included, which rounded off the brochure brilliantly as a showcase of everything that The Down Royal Racecourse has to offer to its patrons.

We wanted the brochure to be indicative of the level of service and excellence that has come to be expected at the Racecourse, and as such we started from the ground up, crafting the look and feel for the typography and imagery by building a structured grid system with classic measurements, which all the content adheres to throughout the publication. Once we had established an appropriate grid we started looking at the typography itself, and decided upon a brilliantly characterful typeface called ‘Agenda’. This typeface takes its roots in the classic lines of the London underground typeface ‘Johnston’, so when looking at an institution like The Down Royal Racecourse, we thought this direction was definitely appropriate in terms of bringing an established feel to the publication.

This styling was then brought right across to all other materials required publicity of the event as well as for use during the event. The latter consisted of race-cards for individual events taking place during the festival, such as the Victoria Square Best Dressed Ladies Day competition as well as the first Grade one chase of the season in the British Isles. The messaging and offering was subtly changed in each printed material to attract the appropriate audience before being designed for double page spread adverts for print in The Ulster Tatler Magazine as well as the Northern Woman Magazine. These offerings were then crafted for use online on social media, but also on the extended network of advertising slots as supplied by the great team at Mirror Media, all coming together as a complete blanket campaign which covered all facets of the Northern Irish consumer market.

All in all, this project brought together the best aspects of the design industry – collaboration, creativity and coverage – and as such was an excellently rewarding project to work on.

Get Twitter Branded

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On Friday 16 September Culture Night Belfast 2016, we are offering to “Get Him/Her Branded”.

Kaizen Brand Evolution raises the profiles of clients we work with and so we are setting up a mini version of our process to enhance people’s online profiles on the night. Whether it’s to document the night with friends, for dating, or to have a killer LinkedIn image for that new job. On the night we’ll be offering personal taglines, and to have your picture taken in Cotton Court Galleries in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter. So come, down, get involved, Get Him/Her Branded!

Image and brand personality has never been so pivotal for businesses in the public domain on social media. Before the event we thought we would go through a few top tips for branding your companies social media accounts.

Twitter:

It’s a conversation, plain and simple. If your business holds a lot of events, or is conversation focused, Twitter will work well for you. Use Twitter to network in a more informal way. It isn’t about how many followers you have, but how many are engaging with you and your content. This is true for all social media, but more so of Twitter. Talk with people not at them, and you will see a big difference.

Use hash-tags to join other conversations and reach a wider audience. When you visit or host events, Twitter can help get the party started both before and during the event, you can create a buzz and reach more potential customers with your chatter.

On the night use our hash-tag chalkboard board to speak your mind in your profile photos, and start some conversations. Chatting to people in all areas whether it’s show off knowledge of your business or your passion for your work, it’s a sure fire way of getting noticed on Twitter.

Keep up to date on our event on our Facebook event page: bit.ly/GHBranded

Get Instagram Branded

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On Friday 16 September Culture Night Belfast 2016, we are offering to “Get Him/Her Branded”.

Kaizen Brand Evolution raises the profiles of clients we work with and so we are setting up a mini version of our process to enhance people’s online profiles on the night. Whether it’s to document the night with friends, for dating, or to have a killer LinkedIn image for that new job. On the night we’ll be offering personal taglines, and to have your picture taken in Cotton Court Galleries in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter. So come, down, get involved, Get Him/Her Branded!

Image and brand personality has never been so pivotal for businesses in the public domain on social media. Before the event we thought we would go through a few top tips for branding your companies social media accounts.

Instagram:

Instagram is the vogue of social media, it’s all about beautiful well composed photos and videos. It’s all about aesthetics. Most prominent is food, fashion and fitness. If your company is any of these then Instagram is your main Social Media account.

Your imagery should be well composed, stick to the rule of thirds (Draw a 3×3 grid and place all object of interest onto the lines). Stick to them strictly and make sure your posts are beautiful and interesting! Filters can seem passé fast, so make sure you are up to date with new filters and try downloading apps with different filters to try out.

Like all social media accounts, being a little bit different can go a long way. Keep your hash-tags low, and put links and hash-tags in comments rather than the main body of text, as links won’t work on posts.

Keep up to date on our event on our Facebook event page: bit.ly/GHBranded

Get LinkedIn Branded

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On Friday 16 September Culture Night Belfast 2016, we are offering to “Get Him/Her Branded”.

Kaizen Brand Evolution raises the profiles of clients we work with and so we are setting up a mini version of our process to enhance people’s online profiles on the night. Whether it’s to document the night with friends, for dating, or to have a killer LinkedIn image for that new job. On the night we’ll be offering personal taglines, and to have your picture taken in Cotton Court Galleries in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter. So come, down, get involved, Get Him/Her Branded!

Image and brand personality has never been so pivotal for businesses in the public domain on social media. Before the event we thought we would go through a few top tips for branding your companies social media accounts.

LinkedIn:

Professional photos are a must for LinkedIn. But try to look a little different. Everyone in the company should have a LinkedIn profile that links through to your company’s page. It’s your professional portfolio and shows off the individual and how you all combine to make the company a powerhouse.

All the rules of perfecting a CV apply here, and tailor it to your business you’re in or after. Follow and interact with people and groups, show off your authority and skill. Constantly learn and post the certificates regularly. Lynda, Google and Hootsuite to name a few, all have links that automatically share your recent learning’s or accolades.

Keep up to date on our event on our Facebook event page: bit.ly/GHBranded

Get Facebook Branded

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On Friday 16 September Culture Night Belfast 2016, we are offering to “Get Him/Her Branded”.

Kaizen Brand Evolution raises the profiles of clients we work with and so we are setting up a mini version of our process to enhance people’s online profiles on the night. Whether it’s to document the night with friends, for dating, or to have a killer LinkedIn image for that new job. On the night we’ll be offering personal taglines, and to have your picture taken in Cotton Court Galleries in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter. So come, down, get involved, Get Him/Her Branded!

Image and brand personality has never been so pivotal for businesses in the public domain on social media. Before the event we thought we would go through a few top tips for branding your companies social media accounts. Let’s start with…

Facebook:

Is your personal story and public space to show the world what you’re about. Every business should have a Facebook page, as it is the number one social media platform. Think of it as the ‘Yellow Pages’, you need to be in it to be found and trusted. It’s best to make your Facebook profile picture the same as opposed to changing it regularly. However change your cover images to show what you’re up to.

Your posts shouldn’t sell directly, they should tell your business story. What’s interesting about your company? What can you add to people’s lives on a daily basis that will interest and engage them?

An engaged audience leads to brand advocacy and that leads to sales, without ever having to post an offer, gimmick, or sales pitch.

Keep up to date on our event on our Facebook event page: bit.ly/GHBranded

Mozilla – Open Source Logo Design

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‘Open sourcing’ or perhaps ‘open publicity’, we couldn’t help but be curious to see the concepts being considered and there annotations on reasoning. Whilst we appreciate a much greater strategy may be propping up the concepts behind the scenes and the notes may be to provide justification to the masses, ‘there’s a touch of the optical illusion about the design’ might not be sound reasoning to divert a brand image. (PS if we had to pick one, that would be it, but not for those reasons).

At Kaizen Brand Evolution our team of seven creatives are brand strategists who utilise design thinking to resolve problems presented at brief. The refinement process is critical and rarely to never sees seven responses being appropriate resolves. We believe in the courage of our convictions when it comes to creative, confidently standing by presented concepts in response to brief with the weight of clear strategy.

However, we applaud the marketing aspect of this post, it does indeed succeed in tying into an open source community approach promoting inclusion in the change making process to bring current users along with the process and tease newbies to the brand. Will it help create the best outcome? Doubtful. But it will engage and create reach, and as we are talking about it, the marketing is working!

See them for yourself here: blog.mozilla.org/opendesign/now-for-the-fun-part/

 

Panacea in Vogue and online

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We love seeing a brand do so well from its fruition in the Kaizen Brand Evolution Studio. Working closely with Panacea Drinks in their brand evolution has proven a massive success for the company with features in Vogue magazine, tastings from The Body Coach, Joe Wicks and growth in London and Ireland.

This week we see the launch of the brand new Panacea website. We use a contemporary site design that reflects the needs of the customer through interactive blogs, visually engaging page layouts and insight to the product and lifestyle. The site boasts a straightforward user experience from start to finish, setting Panacea Drinks ahead of their competitors, paving the way for healthy, pro-biotic water-kefir in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

The website follows as a part of Panacea’s brand strategy moving forward. As brand guardians to Panacea we ensure the direction is on point and communicating with the target audience as it grows. We are proud to continue working with this innovative brand as it reaches the masses.

View the new site here: www.panaceadrinks.com

Reuben’s tasty new website

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We love when businesses grow and reach new levels of success through hard work and considered business direction. It’s our goal to help them get there through great graphic design and web site design. Today we’d like to show how we’ve helped grow the presence of Reuben’s, a modern, rustic cafe that prides itself on delicious local food.

When the owners approached us to evolve their branding and look at their online presence we knew this was a tasty adventure we wanted to unfold. We felt their current website design did not portray the modern and friendly feel the Reuben’s team has worked tirelessly to achieve. The food which should be the hero of the hour was lost in a menu and not visually displayed online and so we extolled the virtues of great food photography, which has made a significant difference in it’s own right to the sites look and feel. Reuben’s new online presence was just not about making it pretty but also making sure we communicated the brand’s personality and history into it. Each page tells a story of Reuben’s cafe, from the opening in 1996 right through to the current day.

Evolving your brand is important to ensure you protect your business from the threat of competition. By continuously improving and ensuring dedication to your brand will ensure you are in a stronger position to grow and flourish. Don’t worry though, we are experts in this field, providing professional web design, here in Belfast.

Comber Pharmacy Branding

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The owners of Parker Pharmacy desired to re-brand their business to appeal to the communities in which they were situated. With the name change to Comber Pharmacy they required a modern brand identity with a nod to the classic branding of the past ‘Parker Pharmacy.’

We developed a considered brand strategy for Comber Pharmacy which positions them as a progressive brand that respects the legacy of the old business. We introduced a ‘plus’ device which can be seen throughout their brand materials and in-store way-finding system. This fusion of contemporary and classic in the identity is adaptable for business expansion and new locations for the pharmacy, keeping the brand messaging, colour palette and device consistent each time.

Shebelle’s Brand Identity

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Shebelle required a brand identity to reflect high end, ethically sourced hair extensions and associated beauty products. During a temple ritual in India women donate their hair to the gods. The temples used to burn this high quality human hair but now they auction it on the open market and channel the profits back into community projects. The hair is locally made into wefts and Shebelle only chooses product from companies with proven ethical standards in manufacture, employee relations and charity work, especially the education of women and girls. The products that enrich the hair are derived from andiroba oil found wild in South and Central America and in Africa. This blend of quality ingredients and ethical sourcing was the foundation for a strong branding position.

 

We designed a luxurious, contemporary brand identity that sets Shebelle apart from their competitors. Patterns, photography and colour play their part in telling the story with each product having a separate, localised illustration. Traditional Indian, African and South American patterns weave through the packaging and marketing materials. The product launch is set for launch in late Summer 2016.

Robert Roberts

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We had the pleasure of working closely with Robert Roberts on their brand and marketing materials recently. With the launch of their new range of flavours, based on famous landmarks across Northern Ireland we designed the advertising campaigns. Using the location specific designs with contemporary photography we created some intriguing ads that spanned the province.

Most prominently the ads are featured at Belfast City Airport. Branding the airport in a blanket fashion for Robert Roberts really profiles the brand, highlighting their forward thinking brand values and setting them ahead of their competitors. We continue to work closely with Robert Roberts and with our team of avid coffee enthusiasts we are excited for the working relationships future!

Sylvester’s is open

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Belfasts’ newest restaurant, Sylvester’s approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create a contemporary brand identity and logo design which celebrated the owner’s late grandfather ‘Sylvester.’ They required a brand identity that reflected the close knit family atmosphere that the owners pride themselves on. This was to be a completely new venture from the entrepreneurs, who already have an established track record, owning a successful chain of restaurants across Belfast – ‘Manny’s’.

Logo Design Belfast – Restaurants and Cafes

Sylvester’s opened its doors last bank holiday weekend and it was a joy to see it doing so well on opening day. The Antrim Road has been missing a hip little establishment and Sylvester’s really stands out as a leader in the area. The design of the brand identity firmly plans the legacy of ‘Sylvester’ and it’s evident across the restaurant. His image can be seen on signage and branded products throughout, with a custom portrait created in-house.

Aside from the original logo design project, we also undertook a suite of projects including signage, promotional material and menu design.

  • Logo Design Belfast Cafe Restaurant Sylvesters
  • Menu Design Belfast

Sylvesters Cafe, Belfast

The Sylvesters Cafe Kitchen brand has been incredibly well received in the marketplace and this is backed up by an exceptional food, drink and customer service offering. Located on the Antrim Road, Belfast this cafe has become a regular destination for diners from all across Belfast.

Pride of Ireland

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Mirror Media approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to give the prestigious Pride of Ireland Awards a brand refresh. They required brand identity, strategy and direction for print, online and event material. The Awards ceremony celebrates the achievements of Ireland’s unsung heroes. It is a national event and broadcast across Irish television channels with a list of celebrities endorsing the awards and recognising the nominees on stage.

We had the pleasure of rebranding this established ceremony with a contemporary device revival and additional modern typesetting. Using powerful imagery to enhance the engagement for the voting stages and a full new colour palette. We designed all advertising for print, outdoor and online. We totally re-designed the Pride of Ireland website, introducing the new branding with a fresh, user-friendly online environment. The brand launch has seen success in engagement and spreading the awareness of the event significantly.

Vandal opening night

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Nothing gives us more pleasure than to see a brand created in the Kaizen Brand Evolution go live. Working with the management at White’s Tavern we designed the brand identity for Vandal.

On Friday night the Kaizen Brand Evolution team had the pleasure of being invited to Belfast hottest new bar/eatery. Vandal is located on the first floor of White’s Tavern and boasts a brand new type of crowd that you wouldn’t usually associate with the lovely, traditional surroundings of White’s Tavern. Vandal taps into the glory years with a cool twist – 90’s throwback design echoed through the branding, interior and whole experience really. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. You immediately associate with the Vandal brand, it transports back to a time when mortgage payments and car insurance meant nothing and all you cared about was your high score in Donkey Kong on the Super Nintendo and the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Great alcoholic shakes and deep-dish pizza making the experience a full circle success. We can’t wait to go back.

Slim’s Healthy Kitchen No.4

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From the very inception of the Slim’s Healthy Kitchen idea, Kaizen Brand Evolution have been creative partners providing all manner of brand support from identity and brand language, to marketing and strategic positioning for all stakeholder communications. For many clients, our service goes far beyond graphic design and Slim’s Healthy Kitchen is certainly one this holds true for.

Last month, Slim’s opened their 4th store in Belfast and true to form, they wanted to make a huge statement to mark their arrival in Dundonald. A 25ft x 7ft mesh banner will do just that! The design takes the already strong Slim’s Healthy Kitchen branding and moves this towards our Spring/Summer campaign stylings which you will see visually rolled out across the brand over the coming months.

Babble Brand Identity

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Babble required a forward thinking brand identity that showcased them as the one stop shop for a career in the call centre industry. As well as the launch of their Babble Jobs brand (online jobs board) they required an accompanying brand that would speak to the user across social media, for ‘Babble Social.’

We developed a contemporary, playful brand identity for Babble Jobs and Babble Social. Introducing ‘Barry’ – The Babbling Parrot, Babble’s Brand Mascot. Barry encompasses the user of the jobs board and social, he’s a well-travelled, chatty high flyer. Barry is seen across all collateral and acts as the voice of the company. A pleasure to work on and as the brand evolves Barry really starts to come to life.

Boojum, Cinco De Mayo

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Boojum approached us to create a concept for the launch of their new ‘Win a trip to Mexico’ Campaign for Cinco De Mayo. We developed an online and printed campaign strategy that revolved around a ‘holiday tag.’ Using the tag as the device to drive the campaign it was clearly linked to the Holiday theme and strategically, ‘Tagging friends’ on social media became the staple of the competition. The tag also appears at the final stages of the competition where Boojum hold a special night where finalists have the chance to find a printed ‘Boojum Tag’ inside a Burrito on the night of the draw. Corona where the main partner in the holiday give away and we introduced some hashtag’s to coincide with the competition #boojum5demayo and #boojum&corona. The competition has proved very successful in driving new traffic to the main site www.boojummex.com (design by us) and raising brand awareness across Ireland.

Brand evolution of White’s Tavern

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The owners of the White’s Tavern came to us with an idea to brand the floor above the traditional Irish pub into a one of a kind bar/eatery. Stepping away from the long-standing tradition of White’s the new addition was to be tailored to a young professional audience, which would become a place of nostalgia and happiness with an edge.

We delivered a striking brand identity for the new venture titled ‘Vandal.’ Vandal’s identity is a nod to nineties street art and culture. Through considered graphic design, the bright colours, patterns and hand drawn typeface are tributes to the 90’s theme with a contemporary treatment. The theme continues throughout signage, menus, wall graphics and online.

Walking the Walk and Talking the Talk

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Valuing brand with Robert Bau

Tuesday saw the alarm clocks set for 3.30am for Glenda and Lynsay as they embarked on a road trip to Dublin to attend a workshop hosted by the Institute of Designer’s Ireland with guest speaker Robert Bau, heavy-weight strategist and thought leader. Once fuelled with coffee and pastries courtesy of Brooks Hotel, they settled down to a compelling talk on the application of business strategy to selling and quantifying the value of design. Attended by mixed disciplines from interior design, packaging and ourselves from the point of view of brand and digital, the room was able to apply the theories to their own sectors within the design industry. It is easy to fall into a assumed pattern when pitching design and overlook the analysis of brief and predicted outcomes that as designers we all do, but don’t always communicate well or quantify as a valuable outcome of the process. The knowledge we gained in invaluable, both to our own company strategy as well as how we can help our clients. I feel a studio shared learning workshop coming on!

Brand creation For Friends Daycare & Nursery

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Watching our customers move into different markets and business ventures is amazing and we’re always happy to assist with their own business development. The owners of Friends Daycare & Nursery, Belfast approached us to develop the brand for their new daycare based on the Saintfield Road, Belfast. Understanding their approach to childcare it was clear we were to develop an identity of the highest level, that would appeal to the parents and of course the children of south/east Belfast.

Presenting a selection of concepts that embodied the business and retained the core ethos, we created this unique brand that will position Friends Daycare and Nursery among the highest regarded businesses in their sector. We are now in turn building the supplementary marketing and business materials required for the launch, alongside a bespoke website for the brand.

Slim’s Healthy Kitchen, Belmont Road – Design Belfast

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Gary came to us for the launch of his new Belmont Road Store in Belfast, the third Slims Healthy Kitchen in Belfast. Gary was approaching on new territory and we prepared a number of brand progression scenarios for him. The brand is continuously growing, with the growth our involvement in the brand direction has stepped up a notch. The Belmont Road store was a complete refurbishment, including interiors, exteriors, menus, window graphics and a full wall mural. We created the new design direction for the Belmont Road Menus, a more minimal design which lets the food speak for itself, with this we dressed the windows with Festival style graphics. All of the design collateral in the build up to the launch we produced in Kaizen Brand Evolution. We also worked with local artists in the creation of wall mural you will see as you walk into Slims Belmont Road.

Changing markets!

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‘St George’s Market Bar & Grill’ becomes ‘George’s of the Market’
Our creative team relish creating brands as much as turning around inherited brands. George’s of the Market logo was presented to us as a blank canvas to create the brand story to deliver a signage and way finding system as well as a range of menu offerings. Our initial presentation included heritage market images sympathetic to the character of the market and its traders, as well as simple graphic interpretations to build assets from the new logo. With input and feedback from the client we developed the visuals mixing the Victorian iron work illustrations with neutral contemporary colour palettes. Fonts that were reflective of the era and simple black and white styling was mixed with brown paper and craft cards synonymous of the packaging found on the market floor below. Stamps are created to brand the paper that would pack the fresh bread into on special nights such as the Twilight Market. Transforming the almost invisible upper level restaurant, to a modern airy eater that gives a nod to the historic market below.

Relax… you’re almost there

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The next time you are travelling from Belfast international airport we hope you are well Fed & Watered! Our brief was to inject some soul into the outlet whilst protecting the balance of the customers perception of a high end offering at BIA. Expressing personality and character was key. The name, logo and colour palette was to remain, but our role was to evolve the brand to next level.

The project was progressed in line with the interior designers vision and also liaising with the signage supplier on materials to meet the clients timelines and budget for the project.

Firstly, we researched other restaurants to help benchmark the project visually. We created mood boards of materials and layout styles to make sure both designer and client were in agreement on the overall look and feel. Once we were exposed to the architects plans we adapted the mood boards to align the brand.

This resulted in chosen fonts, colour palettes and textures that informed the menus, signage and printed communication in the outlet. The brand now talks to the customer with humour at each touch point, maintaining a quality standard yet opening dialogue to build a longer lasting relationship with the customer. From a commercial point of view, it was important to visualise the food deals to reduce customer decision time and make the menu more simplistic to increase sales and upsell products.

The brand assets are solid, and can now be rolled out across other Fed & Watered outlets nationally, strengthening brand confidence and consistency across the portfolio.

Client Quote from press link

“Since its conception the brand has gone from strength to strength, with further outlets opening in Exeter Airport and the landmark Obel Building in Belfast. While the brand and the offering have evolved over the past four years, we took the decision earlier this year to execute a more significant brand refresh. The first part of the project was to work with our designers to reconsider the logo and associated corporate livery.” The updated brand assets have future-proofed this part of our business, and will now be rolled out across our other Fed & Watered outlets, thus strengthening brand confidence and consistency across the portfolio,” she added.

Press Links – http://www.nibusinessnow.co.uk/enhanced-offering-at-fed-watered-takes-off-at-belfast-international/

http://www.newsletter.co.uk/news/ni-business-news/mount-charles-wins-major-international-airport-contract-1-7080977

http://www.belfastairport.com/blog-news/2015/november/mount-charles-wins-major-contract-at-international-airport

Buns on the Run!

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French Village Bakery Delivery Fleet

French Village Bakery are expanding their fleet of livery to deliver their tempting treats from the bakery to their Botanic Bistro and across Northern Ireland to their hospitality clients. Our brand team worked on concepts to translate the French Village Bakery style across the vehicles. After a site visit witnessing the bakers at their craft, delicately placing each embellishment by hand, we knew it was important that this art was not lost. The blue striped treatment with logo ribbon holder is a nod to traditional patisserie packaging to communicate the fresh handmade goods that French Village Bakery create daily. It’s subtle placement, not overpowering the vehicle, is the professional feel that the client required when arriving at corporate catering events and weddings. Our senior design Ryan Stanfield visualised and created artwork across a range of vehicle sizes, liaising with the vinyl print and applicator for quality control. We think they look très bon!

Ooh & Aah Bakery

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Little Treats NI were an established baking company with plans to re-launch a cookie-based company known as ‘Ooh & Aah’. Their tastes for brand direction lay in contemporary French design and with this we pitched 3 brand concepts. The Ooh & Aah brand uses contemporary typography as their mark and is housed in a number of badges and devices across their product range. Clean, minimal and pastille colours were the flavour of the brand and high end baking utensils acted as the backdrop. The owners launched the brand at the Balmoral Show 2015 where we created ambient printed materials showcasing the brand direction and messages. They created custom cookies which were sold in a ‘pizza box’ style packaging all designed in Kaizen Brand Evolution. The success of their products and branding has now led them to commissioning an eCommerce website with Kaizen Brand Evolution where you can select any cookie topping for any cookie occasion. A tasty project that continues to grow with us.

Bakehouse Belfast – Branding

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Bakehouse Belfast approached Kaizen Brand Evolution for a branding project to set them apart as the top B2B supplier of baked goods across Ireland. Already established in some of the countries top hotels they required a fresh brand that would be rolled out across packaging, marketing materials, menus and eventually plans to open a café/patisserie. We pitched 3 contemporary brand directions for the company to which they chose the wheat’ mark with accompanying distressed text logo, echoing the hand made aspect of the business. We designed the packaging for their initial stand alone protein bar using a mix of bold raspberry and mint green colour palette. The brand personality cam in the naming of some of their best selling products, for instance their apple pie was re-named ‘Granny’s hand made apple tart.’ We wanted to use ‘Belfast-ism’s’ for each product and reflect the companies Belfast heritage. All copy going forward would use this approach and set them apart from their competitors.

Aircore Brand Identity

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The management behind Aircore were one of Kaizen Brand Evolutions very first customers. Understanding our approach to design, we were instructed to create a brand identity that could present an air of authority in an already busy marketplace. Through focus on contemporary elements, we created branding that is instantly recognisable and presents the company at the very highest level. Our logo design is now visible across all areas of the brands corporate realm including website, business stationery, marketing literature and of course on each of their wind turbines hundreds of feet above ground level.

The National – Concept Logo Design

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Beannchor are one of Belfast’s’ most prominent hotel and licensed venue hospitality groups. Owning other amazing venues including The Merchant and Yardbird, Belfast, we were delighted to be invited to present our concepts for their latest venture “National”. Blindly pitching work for new clients is a shot in the dark, but the response from management on our pitches was extremely encouraging, however on this occasion we were unsuccessful with our logo design pitch, in favour of one from their previously engaged graphic design agency.

As you can see from the concepts provided, there was an array of branding options presented include a nod to the buildings history in it’s previous incarnation as a bank.

Emerald Wood Identity

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John J Doyle are one of Belfast’s leading chimney specialists. Looking at their market and the supply chain, they identified a market for Kiln dried wood to prolong the life of the chimneys they sold. Working closely with the marketing manager, we built a brand that was implemented across all online and offline marketing channels. The logo design website design and of course the packaging design were all developed in their entirety by Kaizen Brand Evolution and the finished product became a feature of the companies continued growth into new market territories.