When Garth Thompson Wealth Management expanded to become a senior partner practice of St. James’s Place Wealth Management, they took the opportunity to re-brand with a new trading name - and we took that opportunity to build a brand worthy of the Emerald title.
With the name Emerald Associates, chosen due to the similarities between the gemstone and the firm’s core values, the new brand needed to reflect this symbol of growth, clarity, and wealth. It needed to be modern, approachable and attractive toward young investors whilst still being a family orientated financial service with more than a little personal touch, supplying friendly advice on financial growth.
To reflect everything that Emerald needed to represent, the logo had to capture the new brand at its core. The new design was split between the two elements, wealth and growth, with the final logo mirroring both. Forming the outline of a gemstone, the design brought together a vibrant, blue-green emerald with a rich leaf to form the main icon of the firm. The ‘Lapide’ as it’s now known - from the Latin word for gemstone - is underlaid with the brand name using a clean, sans-serif typeface to reflect the modern image. The new brand was ready to go, and we even learnt a little Latin in the process.
Supporting branding assets, colour palettes and a fresh new brochure design to showcase the brilliant new identity were produced along with motion graphics and a suite of social media assets, ready to be deployed at Emerald Associates’ disposal.
There's no better feeling than building a strong relationship with one of our clients. When they moved on to another business, the excellent service they have received from us at their previous role meant they trusted us with the build of their new company’s website.
The site had to have a modern feel with bright eye-catching imagery and smooth animations. Due to the nature of the business it was imperative to have a secure log in portal for their clients.
Our primary goal for Blythswood Associates' site was to make it stand out from the crowd. We implemented bold and bright imagery throughout to strengthen the impact of the Blythswood brand.In terms of development we opted for smooth transitions on the header images that catch your attention but doesn’t detract from the user experience. We also implemented a diverse animation on the homepage to enhance user engagement.
Due to the nature of their business and the wealth of information, it was imperative to keep this to a minimum where possible, keeping the clients informed but not overwhelmed. We partnered this with ‘call to action’ points on all pages, keeping the user experience as friendly as possible.
SRB Wealth Management are a central belt based financial institution that dream big. Their portfolio of managed funds has grown to over £100m in just over 10 years. As part of one of the largest financial institutions in the UK, St James’ Place, SRB want to represent themselves in a way that not only suits their current exceptional offering but also reflects their ambitions…
As a partner practice of St. James’ Place, SRB was to retain the colour palette used by the group and much of it’s subsidiaries. The dark blue and gold conveys trust, wealth and power, essential for performing in the finance market but SRB also wanted their new brand to reflect a more personal approach.
Using a soft, elegant design style with flowing curves, we captured the essence of what was set out for us to achieve. The extended swash of the R character wraps a supporting arm around the B giving the sense of assurance with a warm welcoming impact.
We have been challenged with the task of creating a series of short animated sequences for John Scott Davidson. The first of which, The Importance of Planning, has been published online through their website and social channels.
The animation was carefully storyboarded to run in sync with the approved script, for which we enlisted a voiceover artist to bring to life along with a fitting backing track. We aimed to fit the entire sequence into a clip of approximately 1min 30secs so we had to ensure the graphics were clear, simple and straight to the point.
We utilised SJP’s newly revised branding and colour palette to create a suite of graphic assets that we would use throughout the project. These were layered up and imported to our stage where we animated each scene in sync with the voiceover.
A few edits later we finalised the sequence and made ready for various digital outputs. A great success which has set the tone for the next sequence on Cashflow Modelling, a more in depth look at planning for retirement, which we look forward to completing in the near future.
We engaged with HawkinsThomas Wealth Management, a Cardiff based practice that were looking to rebrand, away from the standard SJP based look synonymous with many of the nationwide practices.
Working in partnership with External Marketing Consultant Sarah Lam and SJP Senior Marketing Consultant Holly Sanders-Cowell, both SJP Senior Marketing Consultants, our challenge was to bring something new to the practice visually, with a fresh look on their brand that reflected them as a modern, professional team of wealth management advisers. We engaged the team at HT for feedback on areas such as Vision, Values, Culture and how they would like to be seen. There were some trends in the feedback which we captured in the new branding.
The team felt that the ‘HT’ should be retained and refreshed but should visually be more dominant in the name mark and be more bold in the choice of colour palette.
Our studio set about the detailed brief and presented four striking concepts to Aaron and Gareth at HT for their consideration, before working towards the final design. This was an experience that was enjoyed by all, and with a valued input from the team at HT and Sarah Lam overseeing the process, we were more than happy with the final branding.
Our scope of work to date has covered Brand Guidelines, Website and Social Media Assets, Email footers, along with design concepts for merchandising, brochures and. Display solutions.
