Our clients expect a return on their investment.
This is how we achieve it:

The Award Winning Brand Strategy

We looked at the marketplace for this new business and in discussion with Nigel (yes – he really does exist) decided the whole look, feel, tone of voice and brand strategy. We had to make everything look like it had been casually tossed out by Nigel in about 30 seconds. On his kitchen table. With a stubby pencil he’d found under an organic carrot.

So to achieve this, we produced a vast range of visuals, changed direction at least once to get the right final finish, and then used the typographic and illustrative skills of Sarah Carr, the young designer who did the lettering for Anya Hindmarch’s iconic “I’m not a plastic Bag”.

The whole brand strategy was to create Nigel’s Eco Store as a brand that was so friendly and inclusive it could almost be having a ‘conversation’ with its customers. So the logo had to be as informal as Innocent Drinks, the tone of voice had to be as casual as Charlie Brooker.

We developed hand written lettering (thanks Sarah ;-)) because it was both relaxed and distinctive, used the image of the world as an apostrophe to reinforce the eco credentials, came up with two strap lines to get across the ‘non-corporate’, ‘conversational’ feel of the brand, and intentionally used the words ‘stuff’, ‘love’, ‘me’, and ‘eco’ (twice).

Awards so far:

The concept and implementation of Nigel’s Eco Store has already won awards, including:

Best Business Website Award at the SCIP Awards.

Yahoo’s Finds of the Year 2007 in the Shopping category.

The judges thought “the idea was really unique and engaging”. They also "loved the layout of the site and felt it was distinctive in concept and differed from other shopping sites. In fact, this was one of the favourite sites overall fitting perfectly with a shopping site’s goal and society’s ecological outlook".

Website Banner and Email Newsletter

The masthead for all Nigel’s Eco Store on line work was designed whilst producing the branding, in the strap line we continued to use the ‘hand-drawn’ typeface, we added a friendly hand-drawn arrow, again endorsed the fact that Nigel was real, and then included two product pictures to underline the ‘store’ proposition.

Full Stationery Suite

The whole hand-drawn look and feel has been extended into Nigel’s stationary, were we continued to use the arrow, this time to point at addresses and names, and developed a return address label for undeliverable items.

Fold-out Business Card

As the brand was being developed, we came up with an early idea for Nigel’s business cards. To fully endorse the ‘store’ proposition, we suggested that he have a fold-out card that started at the conventional 55x85mm card size, and then expanded in a series of controlled reveals that showed the strap line, the main product categories, and then finally opened into a ‘mini catalogue’ with key product lines and descriptions. The style for this item could then be used to influence the on line design work.