OneAnother

Flow Interactive’s new identity

User Centred Design consultants Flow Interactive asked us to design a them fresh identity. They wanted a logo which showed them to be as innovative and creative as their media clients. It had to look a bit cool, not tight jeans cool, but enough to dispell ideas of usability experts being dull.

To find out what they really needed we moved in for a few days and holed up in one of their fantastic work rooms – with brilliant floor to ceiling white boards. In their Clerkenwell office we spent that time getting a feel for their culture, observing their working process, interviewing staff and discussing design ideas.

By focusing on expressing the spirit of it’s creative consultancy business we created an identity for Flow which was entirely theirs. The script logo was borne of both their name and the amount of drawing Flow staff do. Devised to appear hand-drawn yet planned, warm and professional, it was to be used in any one of six colours derived from Post-it note colours.

We hit on the idea that the Flow brand would be well represented by using images of the office and the human industry of the place. These photos were allied with the brand colours to make the business cards and compliments slips conversation starters as well as practical objects. The letterhead was clean, printed in four versions with different a coloured logo on each. These letterheads also bore the company’s new strapline which we also helped create.

Flow agreed to printing their stationery set on a gorgeous sustainable paper, GF Smith’s FSC approved Zen Pure White.

Designing an identity for design consultants was a sometimes awkward situation to be in, constantly challenging but fascinating and fun. We think the work shows that.

[nggallery id=11]

If you’re in need of an identity or simply like (or dislike) what we did for Flow please do comment, call 07812 038655 and speak to Paul or email him.

For seven months of 2008 I worked with Veer, helping them to launch their products in Britain and Europe.

The role encompassed designing elements of the Veer site, designing features and graphics for the site as well as devising and designing compelling content for Veer’s thrice monthly email campaigns.

The gallery here starts with the site. The home and landing pages all required monthly updates of fresh content which myself and a writer developed. We would scour the Veer site and create themed galleries of images, type and illustration. These themes were inspired by insights from our marketing team as well as our understanding of what was relevant to Veer’s customers – mainly designers and media folk.

Creating the newsletters required the design of a set of templates which suited our needs. Once we’d done that we got on with populating them with images and copy, again based on themes, which linked through to galleries the Veer site. The galleries were a chance to be topical, putting great sets of images and type – which I curated – in front of our audience. This is the ‘Everyday Olympians’ gallery, which formed part of a newsletter mailed the week before the opening of the Beijing Olympics.

Type sample newsletters also consumed much of my time working with Veer. Having nearly 10,000 typefaces on which to base themes was both fearsome and a joy. Myself and Rosie (the writer) had great fun coming up with ideas for the type samples as you’ll see towards the back of the gallery.

Got a web project you need designing? Contact Paul.

[nggallery id=16]