Positioning and presence

MediaSense have made their name helping major brands get the most out of their – often complex – media ecosystems. Having worked with the likes of Adidas, BP, Virgin Media, and Lexus on their global media buying strategies, they’re no small fry. We were approached and selected to revitalise their brand and create a new digital presence for them that clearly communicated  their vision of the industry and the services they offer to their clients.

Workshops

We worked closely with the MediaSense team over a series of workshops to lay out the core components of the brand that would inform the rest of the project. Together we identified their unique vision and values and began to create an agreed style of writing for the creation of their brand content. The result was a clearly defined direction and a content strategy for developing the site and taking forward how they speak about their business.

Visual style

Their existing logo needed to be maintained to retain consistency and recognition with their ongoing clients and to build on the equity they had already earned as player in their industry. As such, we used the logo as a primary source for establishing the new visual brand style. We brought forward the vibrant colour palette contained within the logo and created a distinct design sensibility that prioritises a clear presentation of content.

In addition to our work on the site our design work would also need to be applied to a range of brand collateral templates such as word documents and powerpoint presentations. We reviewed how they produced these documents internally and worked with them to create new templates that would help them maintain consistency in their presentations and communication with their clients moving forward.

Website

Our mandate was to build an engaging site that clearly communicated their process and service lines, distilling everything they do into language that would make it accessible to all. To aid this effort, service lines were broken down into four main sections, each with its own colour and set of illustrations. This meant that each area of work could be detailed individually and helped to clarify their offering to potential clients.

Another driving force in the development of their new site was to establish MediaSense as a respected resource for news and opinion on the state of the media landscape. They already produced articles and content regularly for external publications, but didn’t currently have a reliable process for adding anything to their existing site. We created an area within the new site that enabled them to post both original content as well as feature links to external articles they had either written themselves or thought would be relevant to their audience. We included custom search and filter tagging, as well as an ability to provide downloadable content behind an email submission field that serves as a great way to capture data from interested users.

Client background

Blossom Years is a trusted provider of nursery education with multiple sites across South East London. Known for delivering high-quality early childhood education, their commitment to creating safe, stimulating, and nurturing environments for children underpins their success. With a strong reputation already in place, Blossom Years approached Studiomade to develop a brand identity that would encapsulate their values while appealing to both parents and caregivers seeking a reliable, engaging educational experience for children.

Project objectives

The goal was to craft a brand that resonates with parents, communicating Blossom Years’ dedication to excellence in early education, and creating a memorable, inviting brand impression. Key objectives included:

• Defining a brand voice that balanced warmth and professionalism.
• Developing visual elements that would appeal to both parents and staff.
• Creating a digital destination that is easy to navigate, informative, and reflective of the Blossom Year’s ethos.
• Refine the user journey to encourage lead generation and enquiries.

Voice and messaging

We began by shaping the brand voice around the values of care, educational excellence and a positive learning environment. Emphasis was placed on a visual approach that felt friendly yet authoritative, conveying trustworthiness and a passion for nurturing young minds. Core messaging, such as ‘a safe, stimulating, and caring environment for children’ was integrated across all brand touchpoints, reinforcing the idea of a welcoming and professional nursery setting. Taglines like ‘We are outstanding’ and ‘Arrange a visit’ directly encouraged parental engagement, adding to the approachable and proactive tone.

Visual Identity

Studiomade designed a visual identity that is visually engaging and resonates with parents and staff alike. We incorporated bright, playful, and warm elements – choosing color and typography that reflects an environment focused on growth and fun. This aesthetic was carefully crafted to reflect Blossom Years’ high standards, while still capturing the youthful energy of a nursery setting.

Website and user experience

The website was designed as a central hub where parents could easily access information on Blossom Years’ curriculum, site locations, and values. Simplified navigation was key, allowing parents to find answers quickly and seamlessly be able to schedule on-site visits. Prominent calls-to-action, such as ‘Arrange a visit’, ensured a user-friendly experience, and thoughtful touches like a visible contact number fostered direct interaction. We also included content segments for curriculum details, news posts, and nursery updates, reflecting Blossom Years’ commitment to transparency and communication.

Brand collateral and communication

Physical and digital brand collateral was designed to align with the brand’s updated voice and visual identity. From printed materials to digital assets, we ensured that all communication reinforced Blossom Years’ promise of a nurturing educational experience. Brand templates were created with simplicity and consistency in mind, making it easy for parents to understand the benefits of choosing Blossom Years and for internal staff to build communications quickly as required.

Impact

The brand process led to a refined, cohesive identity that captures Blossom Years’ dedication to early childhood education. Parents now connect with the brand on multiple levels: presented with a suite of early-school and nursery environments designed to support their child’s development in a stimulating manner. The website and thoughtful brand messaging help Blossom Years stand out in a competitive landscape, emphasising trust, care, and quality in every interaction.

Building the brand

When Peazie approached us with a desire to revitalise their online presence, we soon got into a discussion about their brand and how it was a crucial ingredient in directing their way forward – not only their digital marketing assets, but their steps as a company toward achieving their goals as a business. Branching out from a small startup in Australia to an international player with an office in London as well, we helped clarify their brand messaging so they could confidently establish a successful base of operations in the UK.

Peazie are a company with deep insight into the brands they work with from the history of campaigns and promotions they’ve run. Listening to them discuss their ability to quickly and efficiently build unique campaigns for their clients that generate tangible results, we wanted to create a brand that expressed these traits. We visualised their process using simple geometric building blocks, created a palette of bright colours, and brought everything to life using subtle touches of animation.

Expressive icons

To represent the different aspects of their core operations and support their communication efforts as a brand, we developed a set of icons they could use on the site and in branded presentations and collateral.

The challenge

JAC is a global medicines management company providing bespoke solutions for hospitals and care providers, to increase patient safety and aid patient care. But with a disparate approach to discussing each of its products, there was a commercial need to create a single tone of voice and concept around its proposition, with nuances for individual products.

We were selected to update JAC’s brand and create a cohesive digital presence that would be a stronger showcase for its unique and life-saving products.

Rebranding

JAC defines itself by offering the most advanced solutions within its marketplace and furthering patient care. Our branding process included a number of workshops to gain stakeholder insights from the JAC team.

The personality and positioning for the brand had to centre around its scientific nature and the focus on precision. To visually communicate the idea of advancing, progression and motion we used a moving line for digital and a broken line, to suggest movement, for printed materials.

Our new approach elevates the insightful work and services that JAC provides, underlined by the mantra of “advancing medicines management”.

Iconography

To represent different aspects of the core offering we created two icon sets for the product suite and other aspects such as interoperability, to better communicate JAC’s offer. We used the Burlingame typeface, as its curvature and personality counterbalances the clinical aspects of the site. We harnessed the curves of the letters to create icons which, like the font, are not perfect circles.

Consistency

To maintain consistency across all platforms we helped to direct the brand implementation, setting the tone and best practice for how the visual style and system works. We documented the stylistic details, such as corner radius on brand elements, type sizing, line weight and other dos and don’ts.

Photography

We chose two photographic directions: inspirational star images that include a sense of motion alongside location, or real-world scientific photography. These reflect the personality and aim of patient care at the heart of the JAC brand. This equipped JAC with all the elements needed to effectively communicate the brand across all platforms and mediums, physical and digital.

Outcome

The new identity gave JAC a stronger positioning and consolidated how it presents its product range. By uniting these under the One:MedicinesPlatform, we established a narrative that can be more easily communicated to customers. Our design approach has elevated JAC’s website, with a clear structure and a strong visual style focused around user experience. This work significantly contributed to JAC’s acquisition after launch.

Our brief was to create a cohesive digital experience for a unique new vegan dry food product launching in the UK all within a short timeframe of just six weeks. The brand was exciting featuring bold colours, unique photography and collaborations from creatives within food, fashion and lifestyle. Everything about the project was high energy.

The site needed to be just one page, keeping it simple with maximum impact. We exploited the size and simplicity by creating fun interactions through hover states and animated elements, giving it a real sense of life. We also had the luxury of great images and so we gave them the space they deserved making a number of full width.

Digital presence

The scrolling and interplay of the site needed consideration, ensuring that it worked perfectly across both mobile and desktop. The result required multiple breakpoints that allowed for a phased scrolling environment on desktop and continued scrolling for mobile. The impact meant that creative distributed socially felt united and supported the website presentation.

Within the digital presence, ensuring that typographic choices reflected what was intended for print was important. The brand font, Wildfire, shouted personality, however it needed care to best reflect it digitally. The font wasn’t optimised for digital viewing and so we had to kern each individual character to make for a truly natural reading experience… lots of pixel adjustment!

Thrive is an online journal that features interviews with and opinion from entrepreneurs, investors and industry experts. A mix of contributors from all areas of the industry is encouraged in order to spark genuine discussion about ongoing critical issues. While it showcases the effectiveness of successful ventures, it also encourages sharing lessons learned from missteps and unsuccessful projects.

Background

Funding London focus on bridging the funding gap for early-stage businesses in London. As part of their work with budding enterprises, they sensed a need for a resource for discussion and learning to illuminate the ever-evolving challenges for growing a successful business in London.As an ongoing partner with Funding London on their brand and website having won a nationwide procurement process, we were naturally excited to work with them to explore this new venture.

Together, we outlined the goals for the project and the kind of content that would be most useful to an early-stage audience. We determined that a set of interviews published each month and regularly added opinion pieces from expert contributors would be both relevant to the audience and feasible to achieve for the content creators. To maximise flexibility of content for possible contributors we set a brief for three types of assorted opinion pieces:

1. Short quote/comment
2. List of key points/top tips
3. Extended thought piece

With a content plan in place we then worked with Funding London to create a strategy for building the brand. How would this product look and feel? How would it appeal to our intended audience and garner both readers and contributors?

Brand

We looked into what resources existed for early-stage businesses and found that what few there were didn’t focus heavily on the issues we were seeking to tackle. We sensed a space was open for establishing an intelligent brand voice to become a source of expertise on the early-stage market.

In addition to being a respected resource, we wanted to create a collaborative environment that encouraged the idea of mutual growth and participation. After going through a name selection process we chose Thrive to build on the idea of the flourishing early-stage environment that we were hoping to facilitate.

We created a custom set of illustrations of work-related paraphernalia in a hand-drawn style to bring a human touch to normally impersonal objects.

Build & launch

Shortly after establishing the core visual style we developed a brand deck to send out to Funding London’s network of contacts to build awareness and generate interest from possible contributors.

This first contact campaign to relevant contacts allowed us to gauge initial reactions to the brand and our messaging before we had launched the full site. This meant we could incorporate any relevant feedback into our ongoing development of the product before launch.

Working with Funding London, we attended interviews and editorially assisted with content production for the initial launch. We built and launched the site with content we had gathered both from internal writers at Funding London as well as pieces we had received from several outside contributors.

We supported the launch of the full site with the creation of a Mailchimp email marketing campaign – that could be customised directly by Funding London moving forward – with key messages and highlight content from the site to maximise exposure.

Printed publication

After a warm reception to the launch of the site and a steady flow of interested contributors we wanted to look at how we could continue to grow Thrive’s readership. With this in mind, we decided to create a physical publication using content from the site and distribute it at co-working spaces and early-stage incubator campuses across London. A printed product conceived and funded by Studiomade.

The whisk(e)y portfolio of Pernod Ricard is wide ranging, containing over 75 whisk(e)y brands. These cater for different audiences, tastes, drinking cultures and aspirations – the brands all have their own unique nuances and sophistications.

Pernod Ricard places huge importance on internal sharing and engagement to enable authentic brand storytelling. Faced with the prospect of sharing information in a traditional format (InDesign styled factsheets combined with structured Excel sheets) the insight team felt a need to create something that could do this as well as engage varying brand teams located across different regions and continents, quickly and efficiently.

Creating a specification

Following a client recommendation, we were appointed to consult with Pernod Ricard and look at potential methods of delivering this important content to a diverse audience. Through our process of workshopping and modelling we worked alongside the Pernod Ricard team to help conceive a brief and specification for a digital tool that covered key points of use, including:

• Producing a simple digital tool that made modifying individual brand details and information quick, easy and economical
• A secure configuration with Pernod Ricard restricted access and user management
• The ability to present various details across the whisk(e)y product line
• Enabling a method that allows users to ‘favourite’ and create their own unique portfolio of whisk(e)y brands that they were interested in
• A concise overview of core brand positioning and statistics

Building an MVP

With a business-objective led specification created and utilised as a reference throughout the project, we began wireframing and prototyping the different areas of the tool, touching on each of the core points of use and planning out how the tool would perform best for users and administrators. It was decided that understanding user metrics was an important administrator requirement, whilst the content structure and relationships between whisk(e)y products within the tool and their associated pools of content needed to be planned and agreed. Different content matrix exist for presenting information which meant our Content Management System had be agile enough to allow changes to be made quickly.

Working through the prototype phase, we incorporated UI design and digital styling that supported Pernod Ricard’s brand. With a modular approach, our designers previewed design iterations gaining feedback from potential users allowing us to test various aspects of the tool.

WordPress expertise

Our specialism as a dedicated open-source technology agency, with particular experience in utilising WordPress as a content management system and api engine, proved essential within the creation of this tool. It enabled us to rapidly iterate through content revisions and produce a delivery architecture for the tool that was robust and flexible, without the financial overhead of a licensed solution.

Enabling engagement

Our tool has been in operation for several years and has gathered an active user base of over 600 differing brand and insight managers from across Pernod Ricard. In creating this digital product we have provided a means with which individual brand managers, often siloed in their own immediate brand concern, can actively explore and learn about the strategic positioning of other whisk(e)y brands both inside, and outside, of their market.

Results

In creating this digital product for the Pernod Ricard insights team we have accelerated their digital innovation – a key business goal – which in turn has allowed better integration and knowledge share within the business.

By empowering brand managers to have quick, easy-to-use access to cross segmentation information, this tool aids internal engagement and information update on key brand changes.

The tool supports:

• Over 600 brand users
• Engagement across a global organisation
• A comprehensive portfolio of over 75 whiskeys/whiskies

An international charity

International Needs have supported children across the world through sponsorship for the past 40 years. They also provide aid to communities through projects that address their fundamental needs such as improving access to clean water, schooling, medical care and improved livelihoods for the reduction of suffering for people in need all over the world.

Brand positioning

The charity’s main challenge has been how to define the way they provide aid, to specifically target supporters with their use of messaging over such a wide landscape.

We needed to create a new brand for International Needs:

• With a revised visual style
• Consistent brand communications
• With brand positioning that empowers their team and members
• Alongside messaging that better structures what the charity does

Family focus

We worked closely with the charity through a series of workshops to develop a new defining perspective to tell the story of their work: helping communities, children and people in need through the supportive idea of a family. This took the focus away from traditional child sponsorship and better described the wider scope to the great work that the charity undertakes. It also helps educate a wider audience to what the ‘makeup’ of a family truly is. For many people connected to International Needs a family changes through disease or famine; for example a sister, brother, aunt or uncle may take on the role of becoming a key parent within the family model. This naturally has its own challenges, and we wanted to ensure that through the brand’s communications, audiences heard the International Needs story whilst keeping in mind the importance of family, and the need for a firm foundation and basic access to resources which should always remain the same.

Families:

• are a supporting block of any community
• mean putting sharing first
• come in surprising combinations
• create stability
• are a place of care for life

The International Needs supporters pack

As part of this initiative we wanted to engage with existing donors and transition towards the notion of a the family focus, employing the use of The Family logomark which we created to help empower current and new donators with a ‘sense of belonging’ to both a collective but also to the vision and values of the charity. Being part of ‘The Family’ aids the promotion of the vision, and also that of membership and donation both inside and outside of International Needs.

Areas of engagement

Donations are focused into six areas which cover project types. This allows for flexibility for the charity to enable them to improve the impact of where they invest and also give donors a concrete idea of how they can help improve lives.

The six areas also serve to organise the world map of areas you can support on the Projects page of the website.

Building a brand

The brand fits the charity’s fresh focus with a refined logo and better targeted strapline, energetic positive imagery, an earthy bright colour palette and a handmade illustration style which forms a major part of the identity. There is a pattern and colour to identify each of the countries where International Needs work. The Family mark is used in relation to donation activities and ties together creating a sense of belonging towards the charity. Both print and web materials encourage an accessible feeling.

Results

Our work with International Needs has helped craft and position a brand identity that connects to a growing audience and donation-base. Integrating their digital presence into backroom administration functionality has helped business process, whilst the site itself (built by our team with a concise and bespoke Content Management System) allows consistent and wide-reaching messaging and charity activity to be better communicated with both existing members and the wider public.

A new fintech concept

We were approached by instiHub’s founder to help develop the concept for a fintech product and build a viable, revenue-generating platform. We helped to map the blueprint, planning and validating how the product would work, as well as establishing the brand and tone for how the business would look and feel. Working closely with the founding team, we designed, tested and developed a ready-to-launch digital insight product for the asset management industry.

Our product creation was based on an entirely new technology infrastructure for the client. By reporting data derived from the values of actual mandates, we helped calculate performance comparators and forecasting functionality based on true market values as opposed to speculation based on aggregated performance data.

Refining the brief

From the beginning, we worked with instiHub to answer rigorous questions that would ensure we were all moving in the right direction. Who was this for, why would they use it, how would it be marketed, what were the future growth plans based on success, what kinds of visualisations and user flows did it need to tackle, and what is the value-add for the user?

Our questioning and the validation phase of work meant that both our team and instiHub’s team understood the reasoning behind each decision made, so that the end result was measured and tangible.

A data-led product

Our experience working with expansive datasets and architectures across finance, healthcare and technology has given us a robust and wide-reaching knowledge of data structure, visualisation and management. Sector-specific experience helped our team to quickly understand and interpret the needs of this project. The way we managed the data delivered the best result for the design and functionality of the product.

We designed a system infrastructure that could manage and deliver the data securely. Developing and implementing our own API logic, we helped devise the product schema and worked with instiHub’s technical leads to query their vast data library through efficient and scalable calls.

The result was an entirely new technology infrastructure for instiHub that positioned them with a digital platform that they can continue to build on.

Creating the brand’s look and feel

The branding had to be easily identifiable, to stand out in the market, but also flexible in how it can be used for data visualisation and user interface design. We built a clear specification that met the brand’s needs then crafted an approach that caters for bespoke charting, intricate data display, responsive digital environments, print advertising and online marketing.

Testing and launch

Data consistency was a vital part of this project’s success. Working through an iterative development and testing cycle, we stress tested various use scenarios. We ensured that shrouded data presentation and cross-brand comparisons were working correctly, the product was both stable and secure, all elements worked across different browsers and devices, and would continue to as the product grows.

We broke the testing into sprints, covering data validation, interrogating and manipulating the data filter system and the range of data presentations. Then in the launch phase, we supported instHub with marketing collateral to raise brand and product awareness.

Building for tomorrow

We helped instiHub take an idea from concept to full product and brand build and launch. Supporting their team with the following services, we co-created a revenue-generating platform in the asset management space:

1. Strategic brand positioning
2. Brand creative
3. Digital product UI, UX design
4. Database architecture, API creation and prototyping
5. Digital development and build
6. Product launch

instiHub has continued to expand on what our team built, and was acquired by AllFunds in 2022.

A world leader

TLA Worldwide have grown to become one of the world’s leading sports marketing agencies. Representing talented individuals from Olympians Sir Chris Hoy and Rebecca Adlington to leading NFL stars Jameis Winston and Dion Dawkins alongside Australian AFL Talent including Taylor Walker, TLA are responsible for some of the globes greatest sporting individuals, brands and events.

TLA’s consultancy and management teams have created impressive spectacles at the Australian Grand Prix, new sports propositions for football exposure at the MCG in Melbourne including both heavyweights of Brazil and Argentina, as well as staging major one-off events such as Wayne Gretzky’s Ice Hockey Classic. TLA count global players such as Adidas, Toyota and Formula One as clients and continue to grow with their reach in the market.

This growth has required a brand presence that, under our guardianship for over five years, has evolved and now encompasses a single, global digital presence, an integrated approach to investor and stakeholder reporting and the ongoing innovation of digital products that will help both TLA’s internal team and also their clients in continuing to grow.

Here’s how we’ve worked together.

Brand building

From the outset of working with TLA our work has seen activity across the following areas:

• Establishing a brand vision: defining a direction of travel and identifying key areas of focus
• Engaging with investors and stakeholders on a global scale, across both physical and digital corporate reporting
• Establishing a logic to a global brand presence enabling regional reference with a view to global integration
• The cultivation and growth of a single brand alongside a period of business acquisition
• Creating a core brand guidelines directive with a foundation of brand templates and assets

In producing a range of brand outputs including corporate reporting we have established an ownable style and creative direction that resonates with TLA’s core values. Our reporting, including both physical reports and digital companions have provided profiling opportunities for talent as well as highlighting other areas of focus from a stakeholder’s perspective.

Our approach to corporate reporting

As an integrated agency, we believe strongly in providing accessibility to all stakeholders. Naturally this means an increasing digital presence, coordinated to AIM Rule 26 compliance, but it also means that tangible, physical communications should not be ignored.

Our work across the corporate reporting landscape within other sectors corroborates this. In our opinion a physical report continues to maintain a role within the Boardroom and within reach of investors. Our team ensure that from a messaging and brand consistency perspective, digital and physical outputs compliment one another and take advantage of the unique benefits that each platform provides, designing for purpose. This could mean encouraging the use of interactive charting within the digital report – allowing investors to truly interrogate data year-on-year, or it could mean the addition of a data narrative to reporting figures.

A core, global website

TLA (The Legacy Agency) maintained a US-led digital presence when our relationship began. With business acquisition and growth however it became clear that a single, revised site presence was required that would aptly showcase everything that TLA represented on a global scale. With their expanded brand reach, we helped their team identify their key offerings, and in-turn design and build a site that would respond to their needs, and their clients’ needs.

Our iterative process:

As an agency, our digital workflow follows a modular, content-first approach where we:

1. Iterate through an idea and discovery phase of work, identifying user and client needs alongside business objectives
2. Establish a core specification (often formed in a shareable Google Doc) that aids direction of the project
3. Map content and user requirements to core site functionality, plotting site structure and needs
4. Quickly iterate through idea generation, formalised in wireframe and prototype form for feedback and testing
5. Encourage early technical engagement with our clients, ensuring quick and confident understanding to both underpinning technology decisions but also future client input (CMS learning in this instance)
6. Design in a modular and responsive manner with flexibility and repurposing in mind, all aligned to a brand vision
7. Utilising Trello we establish a test and review routine, with all parties feeding into this process with commentary
8. Integrate data-led metrics that link back to the brief and the business objectives – often including event-based analytics, KPI recording and other forms of effectiveness review
9. Support the complete launch and deployment process, and if requested, continue this relationship with an ongoing SLA where we maintain hosting and infrastructure management and monitoring.

Cultivating a digital vision for TLA

In the design and development of the TLA website, our team:

• Crafted a site structure that represented TLA’s core business verticals of Talent, Consultancy, Events and Merchandise
• Produced a digital platform that could be easily updated by their internal team, showcasing the great work that TLA have undertaken and providing a profile for each of their talent
• Established a clear, AIM Rule 26 compliant, investor section within the site, integrating with the digital reporting approach that we had also put in place
• Provided geo-location functionality where regional content across the core service areas was segmented for ease of use
• Integrated a regionalised brand social presence that span site-wide
• Helped cultivate a news area within the site that encouraged active content creation, highlighting recent work by TLA that was easily accessible.

Results

Our work with TLA over the years has seen:

• A brand vision develop that has supported an organisation which in 2015 saw its revenue grow to £44.4 million
• The formation of a brand guidelines approach alongside business acquisition, which now forms a boilerplate to ongoing creative work and new projects
• The creation of a single digital site presence that attracts ~10k visitors per month
• Engagement with stakeholders in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia with an integrated approach to corporate reporting
• Innovation with digital products assisting business objectives.

‘Studiomade worked seamlessly as part of our team throughout this rebrand process.’ Dwight Mighty, COO.