Tag Archive for 'branding'

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One thing leads to many more…

Published on February 16, 2010 in Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: Advertising, branding, business services, Corporate, direct mail, direct marketing, finance companies, financial, identity, Inflexion, private equity, Satya Capital, web banner, web design, website, www.alcentra.com.

From the new Alcentra/BNY Mellon site

We’re certain that we can’t claim the credit, but it does have to be said that our clients – and particularly those in finance and business services – have managed to retain the entrepreneurial spirit, even through the downturn which we have (and still are in our view) experiencing.

So, while new clients have been harder to get than ever before, it’s been good to have recommendations (either because our work has been visible or because one of our existing clients has been kind enough to refer us to colleagues and friends) which have been cemented on the basis of the work that we have done elsewhere.

Our new site for the American operation of Alcentra (a long-standing and valued client of Wild West Design here in London) adds resources from BNY Mellon, and is already looking very successful.

Further from home, our work for Satya Capital, which we referred to in an earlier post, was noted by a new company working to bring investment into southern Sudan, and it has been our great pleasure to help them (though too early to reveal our work!)

Recent projects for us have included press advertising, web banners, complete websites, identity projects, display systems, corporate and product literature of different kinds, direct marketing initiatives and more! It has been a busy year already, but we’re always pleased to welcome new clients and the challenges they bring.

If you would like to see more of our work of course, just visit the home page of our website and view or print our credentials document, or get in touch with us directly.

Where do you watch the Barclays Premier?

Published on February 10, 2010 in Sport and Web. 0 Comments Tags: Activation, Barclays, branding, competition, football, International, Premier League, sponsorship, Sport, web site, website, www.barclaysfootball.com.

The Barclays Around the World Competition site

Just tell Barclays, and you could win a really great day in the UK!

With the Barclays Premier League being watched in more places every day, Barclays wanted to promote their involvement with the beautiful game by giving fans from around the world the chance to show us all where and how they watch the action from the Barclays Premier League.

In return, there’s a really great prize of a trip to the UK, with (of course) tickets to a match at the winner’s favourite ground.

What do you have to do to win? Simple, just use the site to explain where, when and how you watch your favourite team. You can upload video, audio, photography or just write a paragraph about it. The winner will be the most unusual and interesting story that’s posted to the site before the end of the promotion.

The Barclays ‘Around the World in Ninety Minutes’ website shows how companies can interact through the web – this is quite a lighthearted application, but it doesn’t take too much thought to show how this interactivity could have more serious uses. You could collect views and opinions of customers for example, or find out what employees around the world think about your company. Views can be made public or kept private and available only to certain individuals.

You can see the Barclays’ Around the World competition site at www.barclaysfootball.com

All or nothing – start-up businesses

Published on January 22, 2010 in Finance and investment. 0 Comments Tags: branding, design resources, ecommerce, hi tech, identity, investment, logo, new look, real estate, Secerno, SME, start up companies, start-up, technology, Vintage Wine Gifts, web resources, website.

Our work for Secerno included their name, logo and animated web site

Because of our links with venture investors and others in the finance industry, we’re regularly asked to provide the design work that is essential to giving start-up companies the design impetus, and the web facilities, that they need.

Sometimes, they have to emerge like a swan, with a graceful new logo, a web site, product literature and many other kinds of design and web resources. When a company spinning itself out from Cambridge University, previously and awkwardly known as ‘Safetalk IT’, emerged into the commercial daylight as Secerno, Wild West was very proud to be the catalyst in that complete process, including the development of the new name.

When Vintage Wine Gifts emerged, from an entrepreneurial idea rather than some blistering new technology, we helped them too, with a smart and appropriate logo, stationery and packaging and of course, their new ecommerce website.

Our new identity for Vintage Wine Gifts

Putting these companies on the path to success is something we’re proud to do, but it’s difficult to manage in a commercial sense. Emerging companies just don’t have fortunes to lavish on marketing – if they do, they usually crash and burn before they get to us!

While we can’t play fairy godmother to companies like these, we can often find ways for them to reward us based on their own later success, a formula which everyone seems to appreciate.

Just this month, we have been appointed by a real estate investment company who need an identity and accompanying design and web work. Their establishment is still a little uncertain (and what’s not uncertain in these times), but when the recovery gains momentum, our new design work will be there, ready and waiting for these new entrepreneurs to catch the wave.

What more do you need from us?

Published on October 20, 2009 in Brand and identity, Corporate and Marketing. 0 Comments Tags: Activation, awards, Barclays, Barclays Premier League, branding, Corporate, credentials, design, electronic marketing, financial, identity, private equity, sponsorship, start-up, Stock Spirits, testimonial, Web, web design, web site.

We’ve implemented a new web site. At the moment, it’s a simple holding site – in line with our bold new look. You can reach it on our old address (www.wildwildwest.co.uk) or on our new one – www.designwildwest.com

The pictures which you view through the WW device are samples of our work – from the ribbons on the Barclays Premier League trophy, through to our web site for Stock Spirits.

It is just a holding page really, but you can check our address, view or download our (very smart!) new credentials document or (of course) link through from the site to this blog (and we’ll be updating our blog header very soon too).

If you would like to see more from us – either on the web site or on this blog – then please let us know. At the moment we’re debating what we feature on the web site – our past award-winning work, case studies on topics as widely different as corporate naming or annual reports, or simply the kind comments we’ve had from our clients over the years. Please do get in touch if you have suggestions or comments!

And if you’ve not dealt with us before, maybe now is the time to think about whether we can help you? As you’ll see – in corporate design, in web and electronic marketing, and in sport sponsorship activation – we have a pretty good track record. Why not go to our web site now and take a look at our brand spanking new credentials document? We hope it will convince you to get in touch.

Please bookmark our address now: www.designwildwest.com

The Cobbler’s Children – Time to Refresh our Identity

Published on September 22, 2009 in Brand and identity, Design and Web. 0 Comments Tags: branding, competitions, designwildwest, identity, microsite, PR campaigns, Web, web design, web site.

Things have changed since we founded Wild West Design in 1996. Back then, it was only just becoming important to have a web site, mobile phones were getting to be less like bricks, and web applications were just starting to be talked about seriously. The dotcom boom was still to come, global warming was just an idea and ecommerce was unknown.

In those days, the bulk of our business was display, corporate literature, advertising in print and direct marketing - with hardly an electronic communications tool anywhere.

Fast forward 13 years, and most of our business still comes from important business services companies, but electronic design and communication is something we do every day of the week.

We not only design and build web sites for companies, products, PR campaigns, offers, market research, competitions and sponsorship initiatives, but our clients often expect to use their web site and email to communicate to specific target audiences through data-rooms and private areas which we set up on their behalf.

It’s been a hectic time.

Now though, we’ve had the chance to catch up with our own web presence and identity, and you’ll see the new wild west rolling out over the next few weeks. We’ll tell you more as it happens.

Working with PR Agencies

Published on September 8, 2009 in Brand and identity, Design, Marketing and PR. 0 Comments Tags: Bite PR, branding, Brands2Life, brochure, Design for PR, FD, Hill and Knowlton, Lawson Clarke, logo, microsite, PR Agency, report, web site.

Our identity for Brands2Life's Making BrITain Great Again initiative

Some PR agencies have in-house design resources, others don’t. In both situations, Wild West has been able to add value and effectiveness to PR campaigns, by providing specialist design, marketing or programming skills.

In-house resources are sometimes over-stretched. Sometimes, there needs to be a fresh injection of creativity or experience in a specific area.

Wild West understands the needs and demands placed on PR agencies and over the years we’ve worked in conjunction with some of the leading agencies in their field. Hill and Knowlton, FD, Brands2Life, Lawson Clarke, and Bite among them, helping them to create all kinds of materials to aid publicity – reports and proposals, product and corporate brochures, display material, props and photo backdrops, logos and websites.

Most recently, we worked on the campaign that Brands2Life are running on behalf of their high tech client, Micro Focus. Making Britain Great Again (www.makingbritaingreat.co.uk) is aimed at creating many more high-tech, high-value jobs for Britain.

If you work in high-tech and you have a view on the future prosperity of Britain, why not visit the site and leave a comment?

Do Start-Up Companies Get Good Design?

Published on July 15, 2009 in Corporate, Design, Marketing and Web. 0 Comments Tags: branding, ecommerce, identity, literature, logo, new company, sales tools, Secerno, spin off, start-up, Tribold, Vintage Wine Gifts, web design.

Database security specialists Secerno have an exciting web site and a confident logo

Sometimes of course, they do. But for companies with limited budgets and sometimes a lack of experienced marketing staff, it can be difficult – especially if there are issues like a name change to be considered into the bargain.

Wild West has helped a number of these emerging companies to put themselves on the map with good design, with an excellent web presence, and often, with the marketing materials that their salesmen need.

Secerno for example, was a spin-off from Oxford University, and originally called ‘Safe-Talk IT’. Now, with a bright and confident logo, and a web site that showcases the company’s many awards and recognitions, Secerno is selling its database security technology around the world. www.secerno.com

Tribold on the other hand, needed a simpler mark, and a theme which would help it to break into international markets with its user-oriented telecomms software range. Our solution was to tidy up their logo, introducing the three circles device and to invent a pictorial theme for their website and print which would imply global potential and care for the individual customer. www.tribold.com

Vintage Wine Gifts was another company that needed to kick-start its presence. No need to explain what this company does! Wild West designed a logo, packaging, ecommerce web site and other materials that has helped this new company build a solid market for itself. www.vintagewinegifts.co.uk

Building Stock Spirits as an International Brand

Published on July 1, 2009 in Brand and identity, Corporate, Design and Web. 0 Comments Tags: Brand, brand definition, branding, Consistency, drinks industry, identity, International, Spirits, Stock Spirits, web design.

: Branding guidelines for Stock Spirits

: Ensuring consistency is vital in international markets

Stock Spirits is a company with a mission, to become Central Europe’s premier manufacturer of branded spirits. The company, which has manufacturing facilities in Italy, the Czech Republic and Poland, needed to establish its credentials as a leading brand, and an important part of the process was to develop, refine, and lay down rules for how it is used in all the markets around the world serviced by Stock. Wild West had a key role to play in this development, helping to guide corporate choices in terms of how the logo should appear, and how to gain consistency wherever the logo was to be reproduced – whether on stationery, presentations, on-pack branding or advertising. Wild West also developed and implemented the new look on the company’s seven different and multi-language web sites. Now, with this critical document in place, Stock is able to expand its presence into new markets, always with the understanding that its corporate signature will be faithfully reproduced, wherever in the world it appears. www.stockspiritsgroup.com

A Question of Identity

Published on June 24, 2009 in Brand and identity, Corporate and Design. 0 Comments Tags: brand development, branding, copyright, Corporate, design, identity, logos, Pension Corporation, Secerno.

Years ago, there used to be tales of companies paying many millions of pounds for a new identity, only, in some cases, to abandon it shortly after. Now, with pressure on costs all round, revising an identity or creating a new one can be an expensive and difficult to manage option. The problem of course, is that everyone is an expert here. Our view (for what its worth) is that ‘if it feels good, do it,’ but that it shouldn’t cost huge amounts of money. Wild West has successfully implemented new identities for companies as diverse as Secerno (www.secerno.com), Tribold (www.tribold.com) and Inflexion (www.inflexion.com), but I have to add that when, after a long process of creation and evaluation, Stock Spirits decided that a modest refinement of their current mark would work for them, they were probably right too. See for yourself at www.stockspiritsgroup.com. We designed their websites too, by the way.

Pension Corporation has a bold new logo. The penguin theme is carried through their corporate design work.

The logo for high-tech database security company, Secerno. Secerno is a spin-out from Oxford University. Wild West also designed their web site.

Unusual Assignments

Published on June 23, 2009 in Direct, Marketing, Sport and Unusual. 0 Comments Tags: branding, direct mail, event, football, ribbon, Soccer.

We’ve created corporate ties for Charles Taylor and branded a pub for an internet security company (so that they could meet exhibition visitors in comfort!). We’ve packaged remote-control cars to launch a new company in the UK (our most successful piece of direct mail ever), and put a DVD in a briefcase to promote a software company to corporate clients. But probably the most visible of our unusual assignments is to produce the ribbons that adorn the trophy awarded to the winners of the Premier League each year.