Our own best counsel: a new brand for Living
07 April 2020
Today as we all live and work in a world not previously imagined, we see every day the importance of brand. As consumers and businesses need to make choices – in unfamiliar territory – they turn instinctively to brands they know, brands they trust. Brands that have grown with them, as their needs have changed.
At Living we’ve certainly evolved as an agency over the past 16 years. While our sector focus has remained steadfast, our approach to the way we create our work, be it strategic or creative, continues to evolve.
So just as we do for the financial, professional services and technology companies we advise week in and week out, we undertook a discovery phase on ourselves – back before the world entered our current environment of medical and economic uncertainty.
The goal: to gain insight into how clients perceive our agency and what we stand for – and how that measures up against what they want and need from an agency. The result was a fascinating read that inspired us, in fact challenged us, to refresh our brand.
Some of the most interesting insight came from our clients’ perspectives on how they interact with us as people, and it was the sense of like-minded personalities that seemed to resonate the most. This also spurred us to consider what was at our core as an agency. We’re hellbent on delivering creative solutions fueled by solid intelligence. We also have a paradigm of vibrant, ambitious personalities that stop at nothing to get the best for our clients, using our creative right brains and our more systematic left brains. It’s all about hearts and minds at Living. Pouring it all into great ideas and top-notch delivery while ensuring that everything we do is based in mindful consideration of clients’ goals.
And this time, we were the client. So to fulfill our brief, we came up with bold dynamic typographic expressions that were composed as if a particular member of our team were saying them. We developed a raft of messages that represent our deep sector focus, our areas of expertise, with a nod to special circumstances such as pitch communications. We then put a boost of Living energy and personality behind the design to make our voice be the frontline communication in our new brand.
We then reconfigured our logo to retain our heritage marque designed by our founder’s father back in 1972, but we truncated the brand name to ‘Living’ as this is what our clients call us. The type was reworked to reflect our clients’ perceptions of us. Colour was revisited to add vibrancy and flexibility to the palette while retaining our core purple at the top level to work alongside a contrasting rubine red.
Ultimately we’ve designed a brand identity that can grow and evolve without losing consistency. Our new brand identity has certainly injected a palpable sense of energy into the agency – whether we’re working remotely or collaborating together in our global offices. We sincerely hope that excites our clients and gives you all a fresh perspective of who we are and why we love what we do. That’s living.
If you would like to know more about how we can bring your brand to life, please contact Kate Shaw in New York, Greg Hobden in London or Gigi Yung in Hong Kong.