Breathing new life into an existing brand was just the start for this Lithuanian outfit
An existing client summons our services
With a successful ongoing working relationship with Lithuanian public address manufacturer AMC we were approached by the owner who asked if we would work our magic on another of his Pro Audio company’s which was in need of an overhaul.
Audiotonas is an audiovisual product distributor & integrator offering products and solutions, dedicated to audio visual technology in business, the entertainment industry and stage machinery, voice alarm and public address systems, technology for conferences and communications.
The existing (and industry recognised) Audiotonas logo to be revamped
A critique of what was in place
Our clients brief, to explore different routes that will evolve the existing Audiotonas logo (right), refreshing, modernising and revisiting the existing brand and identifying the key elements that will retain recognition built up after 20+ years of business.
With an ageing ident reaching it’s sell-by date it was time for the Hatch team to suggest some ways we could evolve and expand what was in place. Above right, we see what we were given to work with. When assessing what was in place, our initial concerns were of an oversized icon eclipsing the company name. Reviewing the existing logo in a working environment such as the current Audiotonas website our first impression was
that the size ratio of icon compared to company name was unbalanced to the point where it is not immediately obvious who the website belongs to, with the ‘Audiotonas’ wording taking a back seat to the icon. Also the company name was smaller than the navigational menu text. Another point raised by our team was; what does the icon represent ? and what, if any was the relevance to the company & it’s industry sector? Other than the icon comprising of the company initials ‘A’ & ‘’T’ there is no obvious secondary relevance i.e. could also be viewed as an Audio based element. The clients response was that the graphic was originally created as abstract art.
Our approach
In the initial stage we worked up and submitted 8 x design routes (below 4 of our preferred options) that explored a multitude of different tailored and bespoke typefaces, each with their own distinctive look and feel. We also advised that with a non-industry relevant icon, the nature of the company’s core business or credo could be relayed with the addition of
a simple 3 to 5 word strap line. As such, a variety of suggestions were worked into these first round visuals.
Ultimately adhering to ‘retaining of recognition’ stipulated in the brief, we concluded that the recognisable feature of the existing logo would be the ‘AT’ icon, this was to remain in some way, shape or form.
We kicked things off with what we would class as the safe or obvious move forward which had the least departure from the existing identity.
• Retained all recognised Audiotonas typeface, icon and
colour elements
• Rebalanced the proportionate ratio between company
name and icon giving far more premise to the former
• Removed the Black keyline retaining box for a more
flexible creative use of White space
• Suggested an accompanying strapline of ‘distributing
sound technology’ set in Myriad Pro
NB: A note worthy point would be the double meaning
of the word ‘Sound’ (in English) e.g as in‘Audio’ or as in ‘Stable, Trusted & Solid.’We were not sure if this would
translate well in Lithuanian, as such sought advise from
the client
• Retained the recognised Audiotonas ‘A’ & ‘T’
abstract art elements by using them as part of the
company name
• As the icon originated from abstract art this bespoke
typeface was created in the same style from scratch
• Removed the black keyline retaining box for a more
flexible creative use of White space
• Suggested an accompanying strapline of ‘delivering
sound solutions’ set in Myriad Pro italic
NB: A foreseen advantage with this design is that
although not directly utilised the ‘A & T’ icon would be
even more relevant and could be used independently
or alongside
Our second offering disects the established and recognised ‘A & T’ icon and imagines how this typeface could appear if the company name was written out in full.
• Here we took a new ‘techno’ style typeface and
adapted it to create a bespoke logo in the one-word
style employed in the original logo
• Although a single word, lowercase style was used, division
was achieved with the application of two tones, black
and amber – this subtle, visual metaphor, underpinned
the company name
• Particular 3D emphasis was applied by adding a
‘cube’ effect to the ‘i’ and perspective to the ‘t’ and
the baseline
• The suggested strapline ‘new dimensions in sound’ was
affirmed with the 3D effect of the logo and was set
within the solid amber baseline
In option three we used a new typeface and employed a two-tone approach that offered a 3 dimensional feel.
• Here we created a bespoke, iconic logo in the one-word
style employed in the original logo
• Both ‘A’s in the company name were adapted to give
a ‘back-to-back’ feel by sloping them symmetrically,
thus drawing the eye upwards towards a newly
developed icon
• A new icon was designed by taking the recognisable
amber triangle from the original and evolving it into
a ‘mountainous peak’, symbolic with imposing
strength and endurance
• The strapline ‘sheer sound’ was to suggest a clear,
monolithic mountain face, affirming the relevance
of a new icon as well as bolstering the company
product base
For our fourth offering we have employed and adapted a new typeface and suggested a fresh direction for the icon.
And the winner was..
From the initial visuals presented above, a three word company description outlining the core business, and a few iterations in between, all parties were in agreement that a ‘worked up’ version of option 2 was the way forward. It answered all the requirements of the brief, and the bespoke typeface, specially created to sit seamlessly alongside the ‘A’ & ‘T’, which were elements that originated from a deconstructed original icon.
Laying down the rules
It is often the case that we come across medium sized companies that do not possess a full set of brand guidelines. Whether a company is set up in haste at the time of conception or they are deemed not neccassary, we would always advise on having this asset in place as it ultimately pays dividends on so many levels when considering future marketing projects, branding requirements and consistency of a corporate look.
Wisely, having witnessed first-hand the benefits that corporate guidelines bring to the table (from our work with AMC) our client took little persuasion, when it came to putting Audiotonas on the right track.
These guidelines have been created to ensure consistency with the Audiotonas identity and integrity when producing internal and external communications such as printed documents, signage and electronic media. Their purpose is to ensure that the logos, font usage and colours are always clear, readable and
applied in a consistent manner. They are designed to be simple, easy to use, but also as a reference point for anyone creating communications for Audiotonas. This document allows a certain amount of flexibility, but to ensure consistency across the board, specifications should be followed exactly.
Brand identity guidelines
Covering: Logo Usage, Backgrounds, Exclusion Zones, Gradient Creation,
Sizing, Variants, Colours for Print, Colours for Screen & Font Usage.
Applying the brand
With a fresh new identity in place, team hatch set about applying the brand; Creating requested, printed & digital items of collateral such as arming the Audiotonas team with professional business cards, electronic letterheads (created in MS Word) and a branded email signature, we also addressed social media, creating a series of cool new Facebook profile pic & cover photo to show off the new identity. To conclude the job, our design team liaised with the clients’ web developers who had been issued the above mentioned brand identity guidelines as they were about to undertake a website re-design.
However our design journey with this company was about to take off when we were asked to design what would become the ‘out of this world’ Audiotonas Corporate Brochure see more..
Digital Letterhead & Continuation Sheet templates
Branded MS Word templates can be dispatched
as emailable pdf’s or printed off in-house
Business Cards Ideas 6 x designs initially presented in our first round iteration ideas, with the client ultimately opting for a revised version of option 1
An insight into how our brand has evolved over the last 15 years.
Which came first, the concept or the egg?
The story of the Hatch brand is interesting to me in as much as I have watched it evolve from birth over the last 15 years, and like all good stories we need to go back to the conception to fully understand the brand and its essence.
Over the years I get asked questions such as: Where did the name originate? Why the egg theme? What’s the relevance to graphic design?
What’s in a name…
Sitting in a loft conversation in darkest Kent back in the mid 90’s, two ambitious friends, disgruntled at working hard for a big local publishing house were discussing, or should I say exhausting what our new design business could be called. At the time the coolest design agencies gracing the pages of Design Week or Creative Review were either a combination of pretentious sounding surnames such as Smithers, Chivers & Randolf or were one-word random objects like Tomato or Frog, I believe Attic had already gone. As combinations of Dexter & Wellard weren’t really raising the roof, we were swaying toward the later single word format.
Contrary to common belief, the name was put forward not by some moment of divine clarity or inspired genius but if truth be known it was more down to our eyes wondering around the
room looking for inspiration. If memory serves, it was Danny that suggested Hatch as in the entrance to the room we were residing in. It was only afterwards did we start to draw parallels of how the name could relate to the conception of an idea or a creation, i.e. an egg hatching.
We felt the name could be reinforced with a strapline that would encapsulate and relay our core business, tie in with the ‘egg theme’ and also have a cheeky reference to us breaking away from our current circumstance, the fact that we were no longer little design whores, spewing out work that rarely gained recognition especially from a financial aspect.
So it was agreed, our new venture was to be Hatch Creations Ltd, and our strap line was to be ‘free range design consultants’
An early Hatch business card circa 1998, sported a pilot version of the Hatch logo picked out in a copper foil block, contrasting against a
tactile matt laminated Royal Blue background. Judging by the dual-name, one card approach, budgets must have been tight back in the day.
Eggsperimental photoshoot
With the old adage ‘a picture explains a thousand words’ in the forefront of our minds we were keen to backup our newly named venture with some cool conceptual imagery. We hit upon the idea that it would be cool to have a series of useable images of an egg hatching in the various different stages. At the time, the internet was pretty much in it’s infancy and resources and inhouse budgets were limited, we decided to art direct our first photoshoot. After smashing up around 2 dozen eggs with little success a technique was devised which involved making a small
pencil sized hole and draining the contents, the egg was positioned hole side down on a specially pre drilled surface. As one of us held the egg in place the other was underneath tapping through with the pencil. Each stage was photographed and placed in sequence. Hey presto an egg hatching from the inside out. The way this challenge was overcome, by thinking outside of the box, epitomises our determination to find solutions whatever the design challenge, this really set the tone for the Hatch approach to every job that comes into the studio.
Making our mark
When it came to producing the hatch logo we wanted to do more than capture attention and make the audience linger. Our goal was to prolong the encounter, compelling the reader not only to notice, but to remember.
In order to achieve this we took a light hearted approach using a humorous concept, coupled with a strong typographical foundation. We love the double-take aspect sometimes used in design where elements may be seen after the initial viewing thus causing a ‘that’s clever’ type of response.
The pilot hatch logo complete with egg
puzzle icon. Can you see the hidden elements?
More than meets the eye, company name appears
within the egg icon when viewed at different angles.
A smile in the minD
This can be seen in the ‘egg’ shape forming the negative space in the letter ‘a’ which itself was formed from mirroring the letter ‘c’ giving a greater aspect of symmetry and equilibrium. Also when the ‘geometric egg icon’ is viewed on it’s side, forming the company name regardless of it’s rotation.
Evolution rather than devolution
A good trademark does not last for ever: it must be adjusted when circumstances dictate. As is often the case with evolving brands our ident has been purified over the years, with fine tuning and simplifications made. The geometric ‘egg icon’ was deemed to be overcomplicated and unessasary and was dropped around 1999, along with a series of accomanying straplines which spelt out the company’s core purpose, were also abandoned in favour of the abbrieviated type based logo (right) used today. This first appeared at the turn of the century when we launched a comprehensive set of rebranded Hatch Stationery along with other marketing materials such as the Direct Mail Campaign.
Our new fully branded Studio, complete with etched frosted Glass, screen savers & puzzle egg wall decale.
Egg all over our face
With a strong and historic identity in place and a set of in-house corporate guidelines established, the brand is applied across the board. All correspondence leaving the studio carries the company look and feel, be it traditionally printed letterheads, continuation sheets and compliment slips or an animated electronic HTML email header & footer, they all fly the Hatch banner in style.
Our custom built studio is an incubator for the brand, as designers and clients sip from Nigela’s Duck Egg Coffee Cups with matching saucers the strong Hatch credo is all around.
Raising the profile of a start up venture with a fresh concept and vibrant new look.
A valued working relationship
We first met our client over 10 years ago whilst presenting our portfolio to the APX Group, a lead provider of power exchange and clearing services for the European wholesale energy market. The then marketing manager of said group was impressed with our approach to design and this was to be the start of a valued relationship between Miranda and ourselves.
Moving into this new sector called for a different tone and approach to our design, but with our tried & tested working relationship a big impression was made. As is often the case,
we cannot claim to know everyone’s market inside out, but with an insightful brief, solid background research and a generous sprinkling of good quality design, our creative solutions transcend all industry sectors.
Going it alone
In 2010 Miranda took the brave move of setting up her own venture with a PR & Marketing Consultancy. Naturally she turned to Hatch for assistance in creating a new identity, stationery and company website.
Throughout the noughties we worked on a variety of projects, from advertising to branding the Energy Traders Masked Ball in the Netherlands. Miranda has always been a pleasure to work with. Her briefs are clear, concise and her strategies innovative.
As Ms Barham’s preferred agency of choice it was par for the course that we be introduced to her new employer with an advance in her career. Continuing our journey with the APX Group and Miranda’s predecessor we set up a new account with Bfinance, a financial services firm providing advice to companies & institutional investors globally.
Our first treatment for the self-titled company was to explore a variety of alternative colour palettes that would offer a fresh and current feel. We finally settled on a simple two-colour combination of Lime Green and Black with a cool Grey as an auxiliary option to call upon. This would later pay dividends by keeping under budget when it came to printing stationery.
Above are four first stage visuals of the proposed logo identity worked up and put forward in an early iteration.
The evolution of an identity
When creating the logo identity we needed to encapsulate the services offered by Miranda, whilst adding a tone and personality that would suit her field of expertise, that being Public Relations.
Looking at the above selection of early design submissions put forward, they really show how a variety of typeface and icon options set a different look and feel. These interchangeable elements helped our client to Pick’n’Mix her preferred final solution seen below.
OPT 1 A clever solution that lifts the letters ‘bar’ in the clients surname from the typographical baseline. This is further realised with the addition of a drop-mirror shadow which grounds the remainder of the name whilst highlighting the word ‘bar’ by dropping its’ shadow by an equal amount. This unusual treatment brings a ‘smile in the mind’ with the detached strap-line ‘raising the bar in PR’ which relates to Miranda’s general approach to business.
OPT 2 A traditional serif typeface lends itself to an established and conservative approach. The tagline ‘Strategic Communications’ umbrellas the vast area of disciplines covered in the services offered. A lime-green target icon has connotations of aiming or hitting the mark & focusing on the clients objectives.
OPT 3 A more fluid option which uses a cool, modern, italicised typeface, again with the preferred Strategic Communications strap-line. The ‘quote bubble’ has a traditional phone icon within the negative white space, reiterating the communications aspect of the business.
OPT 4 The fourth submission has a fashionable, rounded typeface which presents a softer more approachable look and feel. The Lime roundall icon has a double-take aspect built into it’s structure. By rotating the negative ‘m’ by 45 degrees, the white space can be viewed as an uppercase ‘B’ thus presenting the clients initials.
The final elements
Following the submission of the designs above, Miranda and the Hatch team got together to brainstorm the final solutions.
To the right, the results are an amalgamation of the initial design concepts, bringing preferred elements together. Both developments A and B, use the serif based typeface from idea 2 combined with the raised ‘bar’ in the name. Also preferred for both solutions was the lime roundall from design 4 which uses the negative white space to optically beguile, forcing a subliminal stamp on the mind. This combination became a real winner, clever and simple but very memorable.
Solution A also uses a drop shadow to ‘ground’ the type to the baseline, the shadow of the raised ‘bar’ reciprocating the movement of the text. Solution B includes the tagline ‘Strategic Communications’ which covers the multitude of disciplines and expertise Miranda can offer.
Further to this, we took the strapline from design A ‘Raising the bar in PR’ and evolved it (bottom right). To feature at the foot of a webpage and on the reverse of the business card as a summary, an encapsulation of everything Miranda’s company is about and an explanation of the logo. The idea was to keep it simple and very memorable – ‘raise the bar’ says it all. The optical roundall, completes the strapline, enabling it to work well in any environment as well as in isolation.
A professional, clean & updateable website for a solo venture
Engaging online presence
With fresh new branding in place courtesy of Hatch Creations, Miranda’s next requirement for her solo venture was to have a strong online representation. With company websites being the new shop window for modern businesses it was crucial that the new site be conservative, professional and non fussy. This would relay Miranda’s no-nonsense approach to her style of working and appeal to the sectors she works within.
Our brief was steered by Miranda’s requirement for a branded, self contained site that she, herself could easily edit and update. The navigation should be clean and simple allowing the content to be king, in short no wiz’s & bangs!!
Our approach
Before we began planning in fine detail, we met with Miranda to get an idea of her expectations. In the briefing process we needed to establish the functionality and complexity required.
Considering the requirements outlined in the brief, our web team recommended a tailored WordPress template as a foundation. This software has been on the market since 2003, what started as a popular blogging platform soon became a leading choice for standard website creation. This solution is ideal for clients that are working to a more modest budget and the functionality need not by too overcomplicated. Below are our reasons for choosing this system as the back-end structure for Miranda’s site.
With a direction in mind we researched and provided links to online examples of WordPress themes that we felt would hit the mark. At this stage we were looking for a general style, look, feel & navigation (i.e. corporate, clean & modern) advising Miranda to disregard the dummy content and images of the template as most elements are changeable.
The next step was to gather and organise the content whilst mapping out a site plan. Miranda supplied the copy which we supported with a selection of Royalty-Free images, artworked in mono to blend with the colour scheme of Black, Grey and Lime. We photographed Miranda, for inclusion on her site and to add that personal touch, along with cityscapes of London, Sydney and Hong Kong, places in which she has gained her vast experience. Site features included links to Twitter and LinkedIn, a contact form, a site search facility and an email hyperlink. We also included logos from Institutions to which Miranda belongs, to highlight her credited endorsements.
8 advantages of WordPress?
1. Simple to use
With it’s instinctual user interface WordPress is extremely straightforward to use. As the technology is so transparent, time spent on formatting is largely shortened. Introducing new posts, images, pages, etc. can be carried out promptly.
2. WordPress is ideal for search engine
The web coding of WordPress is lucid and uncomplicated.
This allows each search engine, ease of access to register a sites’ information and architecture. Each component, be it an image, post, or page has ‘flag’ elements, specific to its content or headline, which can be optimized for definitive keywords, allowing each search engine to maximise its ability for accurate results. Ultimately this will ensure a high page ranking when searched for online.
3. Update your website with ease
With the ability to completely update every aspect of the appearance and content of a site, the brand and its values are at the forefront making a site look as if it has been tailored especially for the company rather than an off-the-shelf template. WordPress is the backbone to the website.
4. Run your site your way
WordPress allows you to take control of your site, whether it be a minor text change or a total re-vamp. Almost every element of your website is updateable by you.
5. Browser-based advantages
WordPress allows you the ability to login and manage
your website from any computer with an internet connection.
6. Personalise with enhance features
Adding social network, special events, maps, or testimonial features to your site is easy & affordable with widget plug-ins.
7. Self-sufficient for ease of use
WordPress does not use or require HTML input from applications such as Dreamweaver. New posts, pages, images, video & image galleries can easily be created or updated within the system itself.
8. A Multi-User System
Greater flexibility for sites requiring regular updates is achieved with appointed administrative access for several users.
A satisfied and valued customer
Our working relationship with Miranda has gone from strength to strength and Miranda’s business continues to support and promote Hatch Creations through her Partner Network.
To see how Miranda endorses her involvement with Hatch Creations or to check out her newly designed website and great new branding visit: www.mirandabarham.com
Why not see how Hatch can make your company stand out online, speak to a member of our web development team on 0208 297 1200
