Services

Branding and Identity

Having a clear brand for your organisation is critical for a connection with customers and conveying your key messages. From logomark, to tone of voice, each component in your brand should be considered and well executed.

What

A common misconception is that a brand is simply the logo, but nothing could be further from the truth. A truly successful brand extends to anything and everything that reaches your customers, with consistency in the 'feel' it gives to people, extending the human element to your organisation, and showing what sets you apart from your competitors.

Why

Having a visually appealing presence is obviously worthwhile, but a great identity helps grow the organisation and aligns to the goals and objectives of the company. By conducting thorough and well thought out branding, you're ensuring that you're positioning yourself in the right way, and helping to generate business and revenue.

How

First and foremost it's about understanding the organisation, observing and analyising, so that an identity that works for you is created. From workshops and stakeholder interviews, to digital guidelines and collateral, a process can be defined to ensure that the end result is appropriate, well thought out, well executed and flexible.

Who

With nearly 15 years industry experience working directly on clients branding or applying it to digital and printed material, the partners of Alloneword have worked with household brands such as Clarks Originals, Sekonda Watches, John Smedley, Alzheimers Society and the University of Northampton.

Luna & Luci

Feb 24, 2023

Smart Electric

Feb 26, 2023

The Heron Pond

Feb 26, 2023

Creating the Right Identity

Post research and observation, Alloneword can get to work, and start outlining the look of your brand, working collaboratively with you at every stage, and creating a beautiful and unique aesthetic.

Logomark
While this may not be a starting point, a successful and professional logomark is vital in reinforcing your key messages and ideology. Alloneword is well versed in crafting custom logo marks which not only stand out, but are also versatile, scalable and fit for purpose.

Colour treatment
Colours tell a story, and bring a brand to life. Making sure time is spent considering a brand palette, aligning it to your ethos and defining its usage will help give consistency and flexibility to marketing collateral and subsequent visuals.

Typography
A typeface has a personality just like a brand and we understand the importance of this. Passionate typofiles, Alloneword loves pairing a typeface to a logomark and colourway, bringing uniformity across a range of material and mediums. With a wealth of experience as to what works and what doesn’t, this all feeds into considerations when selecting the perfect typeface.

Tone of voice
Design without content is merely decoration, and what’s at the heart of who you are is what you say. While your offerings might be clear, the way that’s delivered will need aligning. Do we refer to ourselves as “we” or the company name? Should copy strike a playful or formal tone? Who is the target audience and what would they respond best to?

In the final stage, a complete and comprehensive brand guidelines document can be produced, and packaged up along with all necessary assets, meaning everyone has access to everything they need to create new material.

You’ll likely have internal and external documents such as invoices, business cards, comp slips and PDFs which will need the new brand treatment. Alloneword will be able to swiftly work these into the correct format, ensuring your brand is deployed succinctly and consistently.

Once your brand is defined, creating a website that is wrapped in your new look and feel will help strengthen your messaging. Alloneword is a UX and digital specialist, and can help apply that knowledge to your website with a digital style guide.

For smaller collateral it’s always easier to produce these internally using the programs and staff you have access to. A range of templates can be produced should you require, creating these for Microsoft Word or as PDF overlays.

Brand Consultancy & Strategy

Building a great brand starts with definition, planning and analysis, and ultimately leads to an industry leading look and feel. Finding out about what makes you tick, what drives the business and sets you apart, gives valuable insight into next steps, areas of focus and deliverables.

Whether part of a larger process of design, or as a standalone service, Alloneword can offer brand consultancy that utilises years of hands on experience, helping you outline who you are, why you’re great and how you should be presented.

Process and deliverables: You’ll need a logo, sure, but what else? And what first? From taking a snapshot of the business right now, Alloneword are able to work with you on what the next steps should be and what you’ll need to roll out the brand going forward. Do we need to first collate content and copy? Do you have multiple aspects to the business? Do you have internal resource to assist with the project?
Workshops: Speaking to as many people in the organisation as possible can help us understand who you are and how best to position the brand. We ask questions and run exercises to help us gather as much information as needed can be derived, plus find out skills you have internally which may be of use. Alloneword will also use our time with you to educate and inform on what goes in to a good brand and how to support yours.
Brand personification: Turning a brand into a person helps us find that elusive ‘feel’ for who your company is, but also helps as a reference point for future decisions. If your company was a person, how would they talk, interact with customers and dress? Setting this out might feel like over zealous storytelling, but executed well, is a key method in aligning a brand to a company.
Stakeholder engagement: A key part in building strong identity is making sure everyone feels ownership and pride over it. To do this, Alloneword can work with you to speak to all key stakeholders in the business, finding out how they see the company and the work they do, gaining their input into what needs to be produced.
Competitor analysis: Positioning yourselves as market leaders is relative as to how well your competitors sit. What are they doing well? What’s their USP and how is yours different? By conducting relevant and collaborative competitor analysis with your company, Alloneword will be able to ascertain what we need to do to set you apart.
Observation and analysis: Alloneword is a research led and conceptually driven practice, and never one to just paint pretty pictures. By spending as much time as possible with you, Alloneword can become part of your business, rather than just a service provider, and gain a first hand understanding in who the company is. Observing and analysing everything seen as part of a thorough strategy report.