The Litmus group is a market leading niche international management consulting company who needed to rephrase their brand to better fit their highly differentiated approach business proposition.

Our first task was brand strategy – to provide real clarity around the strategic intent of the new brand, what it needed to accomplish and communicate to drive a better understanding of the Litmus brand proposition in the marketplace. Work-shopping with the client we developed a sharpened brand essence, values and personality for the brand to leverage.

Having achieved a strategy direction developed around the brand essence “A Specialist Force in Unlocking Strategic Value” we launched into developing a new brand identity loaded with visual cues to help deliver this new positioning through their market facing communications. Utilising our brand decode process we established where the brand identity should be positioned relative to its competitors. The brand identity design strategy demanded the new mark should have the heritage and gravitas of a traditional blue chip consulting firm, but with a dynamic twist that gives it a current feel and unique energy.

To achieve these goals we developed a traditional word mark that uses ligatures and combined letters to give the identity an established yet modern feel. To further enliven the identity a colourful interpretation of litmus paper was created to be used as key part of the identities visual language. Used as a background, to create a silhouette as just as a dash of colour it underpins the company as an agent of change. The combination of visual elements provides a set of strategically targeted visual communication cues for the Litmus Group to leverage, as well as a palette of unique visual elements to own in the market.

If you have brand envy, why not give us a call to discuss how we can re-position your brand for greater success.

We’ve recently been working with Australia’s leading specialist Gen Y recruitment brand. We provided GXY Search absolute clarity around their market proposition and layers of brand definition to allow them to align and focus their brand and business activities. As it often does, this new-found clarity of the brand led to a brief to update the GXY brand identity.

From sport to fashion, lifestyle to advertising GXY’s clients all boast ‘excitement jobs’ – the type of jobs many Gen Yers dream about. One of the defining attributes of Gen Y is they see themselves as distinct individuals who belong to a range of overlapping tribes. GXY genuinely has a right to lead those tribes as it is authentically Gen Y itself, from the way it thinks to how it behaves and where it parties, GXY is Gen Y through and through. The brand identity we designed for GXY was a reflection of their own status within the Gen Y tribes they belong to. The brand identity concept was developed through our creative brand design process. The brand identity developed was applied to business stationery, interior design and website.

Gelati Sky is a boutique, premium gelati range. The story of Gelati Sky has a strong personality driven by Gelati Sky founder Paul Scalisi’s memories of growing up in Rome, eating gelati – ‘a world where every moment seemed frozen in an amazing sensory assault and every cloud in the sky made you feel it was about to rain gelato’. We were looking for something that was strikingly unique, represented his story and would create conversation. The communication platform of ‘it’s what dreams taste like’ was derived out of the brand strategy definition for Gelati Sky conducted by Brand DNA.

The goal was to express these feelings through the package and the tastes through the flavors. The concept that we came up with was born out of these ideas. We combined the imagery of Italy with objects that looked like the flavor to create a unique, organic and scrumptious shape for each flavor. The packaging looks like it is part of memories and dreams from Italy.

Gelati Sky started as a boutique Gelati range servicing restaurants and specialist food shops. The packaging was the strongest step to building a brand consumer could connect with. As small ultra premium brand, the package needed to take on a more delicate personality than the bigger, more established companies. The package needed to not only reflect the personality and story but also to look different while still maintaining premium feel. The taste of the Gelati is simply amazing and we knew that if we developed a rich, beautiful label, one that would get buyers and customers excited it would be very successful.

“Every presentation we have done when I pull the containers out of the box the first word is WOW! Then they taste the product and they say WOW again! I think we got a winner.”

Paul Scalisi
Managing Director & Gelati Chef
Gelati Sky

Client: Gelati Sky
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for retail gelati brand Gelati Sky.

A New Model of Talent Management
Forum5 represents the next generation of artist and talent management company founded by Mark Richardson in collaboration with global media company; Fremantle Media. Mark’s background was in running some of the biggest record labels in the world, representing many of the biggest names in music internationally. Mark’s vision for Forum5, was a new kind of talent management based on the understanding that in the age of shared and social technology, the talent creating the content holds the power, and the ideal management relationship is an entrepreneurial partnership. With Fremantle Media’s backing, Forum5 was launched in 2008 and has found much success with the new model of talent partnership, quickly growing to represent local talent from the television, music, food and lifestyle industries.

A New Level of Brand Clarity
We worked with Mark to help Forum5 develop absolute clarity around their brand definition and differentiated market proposition. We designed a brand story book and helped form a new language to communicate the new Forum5 offer to market, staff and potential talent partners. Forum5′s brand essence of ‘Partnering to Build Talent Equity’ focused on Marks unique value proposition and formed the starting point for our creative brand expression.

A New Brand Identity
The Forum5 brand mark locks the number 5 within the word ‘Forum’ to illustrate the focus on talent partnerships in a simple and memorable form. The word-mark is simple and graphic allowing it to work across many different applications and to be ‘dialed-up’ or ‘dialed-down’ in prominence depending on the piece of communication and the talent brands it would be appearing with.

The Forum5 business card had to stand-out in an industry where talent is typically bombarded with business cards. Driving from our communication platform of Talent Partnerships we created a book of perforated business cards. The talent receives one half of the card with Forum5s contact details, but the talent’s details are also taken, written on the part of the card that remains with the Forum5 staff member. The ceremony of tearing the card and taking details becomes a brand gesture demonstrating the unique proposition of partnership-based talent relationships. The cards are also individually numbered, and each month a number is drawn and the person who received that card is invited to a lunch with Forum5 founder Mark Richardson.

To assist Forum5 in communicating their brand proposition to the market place, their staff and to Fremantle Media we designed a brand story book. We developed a set of new language and key brand communication messages for each market, enhanced by the book design to spark buy-in and facilitate understanding of the Forum5 brand proposition.

Change the Way You See Your World.
Where do you start when creating an invitation to an event featuring Edward de Bono the inventor of the terms ‘lateral thinking’ and the grand father of creative business in thinking?

When we were commissioned to create a stand-out event invitation for de Bono, we took the only approach we could – a lateral one. First we developed the theme for the event; ‘Change the way you see your world’, the design features the amazing illustration of Mike Lay, whose surreal work beautifully captures the theme. Working with a short history of de Bono and a handful of powerful quotes from many of the global brands and politicians who have become de Bono converts, we turned the invitation into a twenty four page book on business thinking, bound with a white rubber band.

The result was an engaging and unusual direct mail invitation that went some way to capturing the unconventional and challenging inspiration of de Bono himself.

You can find more of Mike Lay’s brilliant illustration work here: www.flickr.com/photos/mikelay

Beverley & Russell provide bespoke business mentoring and leadership coaching to CEO and senior exec. level clients across corporate Australia. The seniority of their clients are attracted by the breadth and depth of Beverley & Russell’s skill set and their ability to customize and individualise their programs. During the brand definition phase of the project we formed a brand value proposition around premium and bespoke professional services that was driven by the experience and expertise of the client and created a clearly differentiated go-to-market strategy.

The visual language we designed for the Beverley and Russell brand identity reflects the premium, bespoke positioning from the crafted B&R signature mark to the colour palette and supporting visual language. Beverley & Russell invested in a complete range of stationery collateral with high production values to reinforce their positioning and reflect the status of their clients.

Client: Beverley & Russell
Brand identity, stationery and website design for Beverley & Russell Management Consultants.

Nava Homes is a SME home building company with a proud family history. We worked with Nava tp develop their differentiated market proposition and define their brand. The Nava brand was deeply rooted in their philosophy of building homes to enjoy with the same sense and joy for life as we often associate with the Italian family lifestyle which is expressed by the Nava brand essence as ‘Italian Family Living’. We developed a brand book to help provide clarity for the organisation, that also doubled as a marketing brochure for their clients, telling the Nava family story along the way.

The brand book reinforced Nava’s brand proposition, ‘Italian Family Living’ by introducing the Italian family (the Nardo’s) who are behind the Nava Homes brand. The brand book was developed as a crucial part of the communications campaign and as an intimate and personal exploration of the Nava Homes family business. Life, love and laughter, the book holds the history, traditional family recipes and personal triumphs embedded in the Nardo family. The brand book not only contained the essence of the brand spirit, but also a number of elements of the Nava family lifestyle such as a family recipe for wood-fired Pizza and rules for bocce, that tied-into a series of sales promotions.

We also worked with Nava to transform their marketing strategy from a traditional channel focus of newspapers to a blank canvases focus. As a home builder, Nava had a number of display homes located in display villages around Melbourne. The vast majority of Nava’s marketing budget was spent on traditional newspaper ads, aimed at driving traffic to the display villages their display homes were located-in. The problem was that as a smaller player, Nava’s ads were buried deep in the real estate section of the local newspapers. The first pages were filled with double-page spread, full colour ads from the bigger home builders who’s ads were aimed at guess what… driving traffic to those very same display villages.

There was no way with our clients marketing budget that Nava could ever own the newspaper advertising space – that was a brand canvas crowded with big players. What we identified as a Blank Canvas was the opportunity to own the car parks at the display villages. Our strategy was – ‘Let the big brands drive home buyers to the display villages, but once they arrive, let’s disproportionately attract their attention and direct them to our Italian Family Living Nava Homes.’ Whilst Nava’s marketing budget would never be enough to stand-out in the newpapers, it was ample to make a big splash at the display village carparks – which were relatively Blank Canvases.

Client: Nava Homes
Brand definition, brand book, and integrated marketing and communications campaign for Nava Homes.

Over the last decade or more we’ve worked-on a number of project with fashion label Hemisphere. Hemisphere are a fiercely independent mens label with and ‘everyday denim sub-brand – you can see some of the work we designed with them here. In 2006 we worked on some fabric designs for a range of their shirts, which became their best selling lines, and as a result decided a couple of years later to form a partnership to launch a new label of premium mens shirts featuring custom designed printed fabrics.

We worked in creative partnership to develop the brand name, proposition, brand definition and designed the brand identity for the label which we called Barnaby & Brown. We designed a packaging solution that was both functional – it protects the shirt, and unique with layers of discovery.

The brand experience also included swing tags designed for the first range that reflected the style of a ‘little black book’. The swing tags included information about shirt care as well as a pocket that contained a pair of collar stays.

We also designed two ranges of shirts. Our designs were screen printed onto high quality Egyptian cotton which were then made-up into several shirt designs using Hemisphere’s shirt blocks. The shirts were finished with subtle embellishments, high quality buttons , stitching and labeling.

We produced stationery and a start-up web site for the brand before the venture was nipped in the bud. From a brand perspective, it was a huge pitty for us to not see all of our fine work come to fruition. And yes, we’re still in therapy.

Client: Barnaby & Brown
Brand identity, brand strategy and packaging for fashion label Barnaby & Brown.