I have been to two of Sands lectures now and each time I
find them interesting and learn useful tips for when I proceed to apply for my
placement within the next year or so. I find this is especially useful with
being a first year student as it helps me to consider how to go about my
practise in terms of setting up an online presence and how to go about building
up a portfolio.
Jonathan Sands OBE is chairman of Elmwood, a highly
successful design agency that has won numerous awards including that of the
number one design effectiveness award and creates brand strategies for many of
the famous brands such as the BBC, Royal Mail and Boots. Not only do they work
with the top companies but also that of smaller business’s, which creates a
diverse range of design challenges. If
anyone was to say to Sands that a design brief was boring he would challenge it
this as he says “there is no such thing as a boring job, its what you make of
it”. He showed us an example of a design challenge they were given to rebrand a
sewer company, this may seem boring to some but to Elmwood they take the
challenge on headfirst. Taking into account the clients aims and wishes and the
target audience, they set out to find a new perspective to visualise the company.
In this instance they won a design award from Germany without even entering!
This was purely for that fact that the awarding body loved the strategy and
outcome.
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| Elmwood - Serious** Rebrand |
The company renamed to Serious** can clearly be seen as
have a clean (excuse the pun) simple visual but with colours which make the
aims of the company instantly recognisable as to their service. For instance
the soft brown and green used for the truck graphics paired with the company’s
logo and tagline instantly brings about the idea of a green way of disposal and
has a friendly approach through the use of a soft hue. In regards to the
brand’s language, it is friendly and has a sense of humour that brings a smile
to their customers. It has this feel not only due to its pleasant colour choice
and its written narrative but also due to the choice of typeface used, which is
clean cut and easy to read. Looking at the brand type I can instantly recognise
Helvetica as being the primary font and for the secondary typeface they have
used a more playful font to present a welcome greeting and tone of voice.
I felt this example was an interesting and enlightening one. I found it enlightening due to the turn around from a generic looking brand to a unique and engaging design, not forgetting to mention the ability to take a seemingly dull project and turn t into an exciting endeavour with plenty of character.
You can visit Elmwood's case study of their design strategy for this project and also visit Serious**'s website in the links below: