We loved our old logo. Simple, yet friendly. But after seven years it was looking a little tired, and perhaps too simple. The tree shape didn’t lend itself to other formats; the colour was a bit dated. And more importantly it didn’t reflect where we saw ourselves in the school website design market. With a new CMS in development, a new mobile app service and major enhancements in responsive coding, our office was buzzing with an energy not reflected in our branding.

Identity

We went through many focus sessions, discussing our values and how we wanted to be perceived by schools. We take pride in our beautiful designs, solid code and our great CMS, but then so do many companies. What’s our difference? We think our transparency is pretty special – fixed prices, great value, no pushy sales people. But the bottom line is that we love working with schools, we love making websites and we want to be seen as ‘friendly experts’. Out of this came our new strapline: ‘we love school websites’.

Logo

The new logo shape has a nod to our old tree, but is more interesting to look at and can be used in different ways. Some see a tree shape, others see balloons. Either way, it reflects our simplicity and openness. As an aside, I personally love the fact that it can be drawn in a single pen stroke.

Website

With the logo designed, we moved on to the re-design of our own website. We knew our audience and we knew our objective: communicate our services to schools whilst showcasing our own skills in a responsive, future-proof design. We enjoyed using bright, bold colours, big fonts and lots of spacing. We’ve re-jigged the menu to reflect our new services and of course everything works great on desktops, mobiles and tablets of differing sizes.

Purpose

In short, the new branding is more than just a new look. It’s a chance to communicate our revitalised purpose to deliver our school website vision.