Role: Creative Director, Brand & Content (Sep 2023 to Oct 2025) Scope: Brand identity, logo suite, colour, typography, pattern, shapes, imagery direction, tone of voice and brand guidelines
The challenge
Messaging is a technical product, and the way the company talked about it showed. Copy leaned on jargon and features, and the visual brand had no single idea holding it together. Sales, product and marketing each needed to produce work quickly, and without shared rules every piece pulled in a slightly different direction.
The brief was to make business messaging feel more human, and to make that feeling easy to repeat.
The idea
Messaging your customers love.
The identity starts from the speech bubble. The "o" in the wordmark became a device that could stand alone, so one small shape could carry the logo, the icon and the pattern. Everything else was built to support it, not compete with it.
The system
Logo suite. A primary wordmark, a tagline version and the standalone "O" device, each in positive and reversed forms. Clear space is set by the height of the "o", with minimum sizes for print (20 to 30 mm) and digital (140 px), so the logo holds up from a pen to a media wall.
Colour. Deep navy and violet carry the brand, with soft pink and magenta used sparingly for energy. Two gradients add depth. Every colour is specified for screen (RGB and hex) and print (CMYK and Pantone), so it looks the same wherever it lands.
Typography. Noto Sans in three weights, with a clear hierarchy from slogan to body copy. It is open, readable and free to use across every medium, which meant no licensing barrier for anyone producing work.
Pattern and shapes. The bubble device repeats into a pattern for backdrops, screens and events. A family of line shapes and curves sits alongside it for compositions that need more movement, with a simple rule: keep them balanced and never overcomplicated.
Imagery. Real people, photographed naturally, in a primary and a secondary set. Illustrated interface scenes layer UI, people and shapes to show the product without a screenshot dump.
Voice. A brand is also how it speaks. I wrote a tone of voice that moves the company from stuffy to fresh, from technical speak to plain English, and from serious to a little irreverent. It includes do and don't guidance, before and after rewrites of real sales emails, and a glossary that translates technical terms into everyday language.
Built for other people to use
The guidelines show the correct logo placement across paper sizes, stationery, tees, tote bags, cups and pens. They explain which logo to choose and where it goes, with clear do and don't examples. The aim was a system where the right answer is the obvious one.
The workI directed the identity and wrote the copy and campaign messaging. I then led the company’s first integrated campaign across digital, print and social, and built and mentored the team that kept it all consistent.
The result
Branded search grew 30% within three months of launch.
Branded search grew 30% within three months of launch.
