Back in the Autumn of 2021, driven by the desire for continuous improvement in our business, We started conversations with branding specialist and member Jo Pinkney of Pinx Creative. This was the start of a fascinating journey and a valuable lesson for Michelle and I in understanding our brand and purpose.
Jo prepared a Brand Workshop for us based on prior research and her extensive experience. She then guided us through something entirely new to us and we explored brand personality. We were bowled over by the structured yet enjoyable way we explore brand persona and how this, combined with colours and imagery, would create a solid framework for how our business is communicated going forward.
Did you know that every brand has a personality, and each broadly aligns with a typical person with all their traits and characteristics? This helps brands create a feeling and differentiate themselves using colour, imagery, fonts and language to create an emotional connection with their customers.
When digging into the brand personalities, we were immediately drawn to two in particular – the EVERYMAN and NURTURER. Each brand personality came with a set of traits that we then had to create our brand using the guidance of Jo and her expertise. This covered language, fonts and colours. We soon realised the value in our name but that our existing colour scheme might psychologically send messages that were not aligned with who we are six years into our journey. We realised we are warm, friendly, and caring, and our visual representation needed to show this.
So, we set about creating our new look and feel and carrying this into a new web platform that would embody who we are and give our members so much more.
Guided by Jo over the last ten months, we’ve developed our brand, capturing our values and promise, our fonts and image style. The process led to us having a photoshoot with member Kevin Greene photography, who could follow our brief on creating a set of images based on a traditional village – somewhere friendly and dependable, warm and kind. Everything that we stand for.
This, along with our new brand guidelines, has painstakingly been pulled together into a brand-new web platform which uses the latest technology, tells our story, showcases our brand, and is engineered around our business processes and, most importantly, our members.
In line with our kind, caring, and approachable personality, we understand that sometimes things aren’t perfect when launching a project of this size. We would love any feedback or suggestions for improvements to the new site and brand. Get in touch today and let us know what you think.
