Springer Nature, the scientific and academic publishing company, was born out of the merger of Springer Science & Business Media together with the Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, and Macmillan Education.
To support integration and enable employees to work more easily together, a new platform built using Jive technology was developed for all employees globally, enabling two way communication and social business collaboration.
Marque Antony was asked to theme this new communication platform in line with the overall Springer Nature brand.
The name Hive was chosen, and developed into an identity system capable of being applied both online and offline.
Pertwood is one of the oldest organic farms in England. Their range of four core breakfast cereals are licensed to Alara, one of the UK’s leading manufacturer’s of organic and premium muesli.
Marque Antony developed the identity as part of a team led by Kin Branding to re-invigorate the pack design – seen as a bit tired and traditional. The brand and packs needed to convey a sense of ‘pure and good’; pure ingredients that are good for you, with no nasty additives. The provenance being from one historic, authentic, Wiltshire organic farm.
Following the success of the initial range a further set was commissioned using recipes combined with sugar substitute, Yacon.
Independent Age – the charity that provides lifelong support to older people on very low incomes – had completed a far-reaching review of its operations and positioning in the marketplace. It needed to signal a clear step change and provide a real point of differentiation to communicate its new vision and purpose.
The job involved creating a new brand identity, resulting in the ‘Tree of Life’ logo, and a distinctive visual style. The tree conveys the sense of an enduring organism, supporting a closely connected and thriving community. It incorporates the three brand values of Independent Age: Committed, In-touch, and Vitality.
Project undertaken whilst Creative Director at Corporate Edge.
Internal branding
Curious Minds is an internal umbrella brand campaign identity, designed to communicate key events at the London Campus offices of Macmillan Science and Education publishers.
The name builds on the brand promise of ‘Helping curious minds achieve great things’. Marque Antony, in partnership with BrandGuild, was tasked to create an identity structure that could categorise different types of events and other bespoke initiatives in an inspiring and ‘curious’ manner. We created an original look and feel centred around a hybrid question mark and monogram. This highly adaptable device can frame and watermark a wide range of simple and striking imagery – everything from photography to more bespoke illustration – to communicate a chosen theme or subject across print and digital media.
The Society of Authors is an industry body that has been serving the interests of professional writers for over a century. It has more than 9,000 members and associates writing in all areas of the profession.
The Society of Authors wanted to make their brand identity more approachable and relevant, in line with major technological changes taking place in the world of publishing.
Marque Antony, in partnership with BrandGuild was tasked with defining an organisational personality for the SOA and bringing this to life in a new brand identity that balanced a sense of gravitas and experience with a sense of dynamism and energy. The identity is currently being implemented across their website stationery, newsletter templates, membership packs, awards & events collateral, and their quarterly flagship magazine, The Author.
What makes a good logo? Ask that question and you’ll get a multitude of answers.
The great American graphic designer Paul Rand summed it up well; “A logo derives from the quality of the thing it symbolizes, not the other way around”.
Here is a small selection of personal favourites created over the last few years for some lovely clients; each – hopefully you will agree – are memorable, differentiating, practical and impactful.
Edinburgh Castle is a world-class visitor attraction. It had no distinct way of positioning itself on a par with tourist locations such as the Tower of London or the Eiffel Tower. Marketing the castle outside of Scotland was key for the brand, but it also had to ring true with its homeland audience. The authenticity of the experience was common to everyone who visited the castle, regardless of whether they were tourists, or business people. Crucially, Edinburgh Castle has played a significant role in Scottish history.
The core thought created ‘Defender of the Nation’ – rightly recognised this status and helped inspire the direction of the identity, an iconic fusion of the castle’s physical structure and royal heritage.
Project undertaken whilst Creative Director at Corporate Edge.
Emissions Analytics was founded to provide accurate, real emissions data on vehicles. The company needed a name and brand identity to help launch their new accreditation scheme to market with authority and conviction.
Marque Antony developed the identity and infographics as part of a team led by Kin Branding to create a fully worked through naming and information system.
The infographic was intended to appear in consumer magazines, on vehicle review websites, and other car collateral material. A key constraint was that it would need to work well at small sizes, approximately 4cm square.
We developed a website interface design to present the tests, with emissions results, and downloadable information tokens for each vehicle.
Vertex, a leading BPO and Customer Management Outsourcer operates across a wide range of market sectors and geographies delivering customer experiences and winning outcomes with a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
The company required a distinctive competitive positioning and a new more confident voice. The project began by creating a brand positioning, based upon Vertex’s inherent enthusiasm and ‘electricity of ideas’. This led to the creation of a new identity and visual style that better expressed their role and influence in enabling their client businesses to flourish. This was further defined by the strapline – Positively Charged.
Project undertaken whilst Creative Director at Corporate Edge.
Bay Media established in 2000, is by far the largest provider of lamppost advertising and street dressing in the UK. From the Tour de France to the Olympic Games, and the Grand National more and more organisations are using BayMedia’s to project their messages in the most dynamic, visible and cost-effective way possible.
Bay Media saw the need to re-energise their brand and consolidate their reputation as leaders in street-dressing media. Marque Antony, in partnership with strategic consultancy Comms Division was tasked with the creation of an identity and visual system in line with their business philosophy of developing genuine parnerships, and providing a continuous end-to-end service. The logo and related visual style dynamically evokes the core business and its bond with customers.
Shetland decided that with the decrease in its revenues from the oil business it must develop a new economic strategy. The strategy was to create a brand that could help put Shetland more firmly on the map in terms of its unique natural produce, its products and its popularity as a tourist destination.
It was imperative that Shetlanders should endorse the project and that the brand would strongly reflect and communicate the islands very distinctive Norse/Scottish culture and traditions. The brand was translated into a powerful logo – a fusion of cultural cues – together with a rich and vivid visual style using photography, typography, tone of voice and imagery to represent Shetland in its totality. This has driven the look and voice of all communications including brochures, websites and exhibitions.
Project undertaken whilst Design Director at Corporate Edge.
The NSG Group is one of the world's leading manufacturers of glass and glazing systems, specialising in building, automotive and technical glass products. Since the acquisition of Pilkington in June 2006 there was an increased amount of confusion between existing legacy brands, and the company’s numerous international business lines. The situation made it hard to operate as an integrated global business. There was a clear need to establish a strong, consistent and unifying Group visual identity for all operations, and at all levels of communication.
The project involved a detailed audit, brand architecture review, and the distillation of the company’s strategic management plan into a relevant set of creative coordinates, including a defining core thought – World Glass.
This process informed brand structure and the development of a distinctive, and modern visual style based upon the optical properties of glass.
Project undertaken whilst Creative Director at Corporate Edge.
Brand identity
Longwall Security is a widely respected delivery partner with extensive experience in implementing cyber and IT security solutions in medium and large enterprise environments. Customers range from large multi-nationals, private banks, central and local governments, police forces, universities, schools, and the NHS.
Longwall was aware its brand identity was out of step with the changing nature of its business. Where it had previously operated as more of a service provider and re-seller it was clear the company’s strength was in outstanding managed services, its innovative technologies, and its trusted partnerships with clients .
Following a brand re-positioning and re-evaluation of its offer Marque Antony was tasked with creating a new identity and visual style that would vividly express Longwall’s business philosophy of offering ‘peace of mind through trusted partnerships’.
The creation of a new logo encapsulated Longwall’s ‘one team’ relationship with its clients, two elements brought together in common purpose – forming an L-shaped white overlap – as a visual metaphor of the clarity and ‘peace of mind’ that Longwall provides its customers. The human-based illustration style was developed to complement the visual language of the logo, bringing alive Longwall’s partnerships, and expertise; a style distinctive from conventional imagery of cyber security.
With the valuable design support of Jamie Solomon of StudioSolv throughout the creative process Marque Antony developed the visual style across a number of applications including the website and brand guidelines.
Infographic design
From creating an interconnecting landscape of cities and towns to developing a unique game of snakes and ladders, Marque Antony has enjoyed collaborating with STM for a number of years to bring alive their annual Tech Trends as a bespoke infographic.
STM Trends is an annual visual futurecast for publishers, libraries, funding agencies, scholarly societies, researchers, academic institutions, and other stakeholders committed to upholding the integrity of research. Its aim is to inspire and catalyse ideas and solutions to help advance trusted science. It is is created by a 30 strong committee of senior staff in innovations, technology, strategy, business development, platforms and IT.
The methodology is based on the Delphi-method for technology forecasting, looking at trends up to 5 years ahead.
