03 Oct Rothera Sharp Solicitors Brand Restyle
Baboon Creative is proud of the fact that we have a had a long standing and successful relationship with Rothera Dowson, the Nottingham based firm of solicitors. The company can trace its lineage back to the 1800’s and it’s this long establishment that has given Rothera Dowson a well deserved reputation in the legal services industry nationwide. For the last eight years Baboon Creative has been involved with the design and development of key marketing elements for their business including branding and logo development, design and production of stationery and literature, and a whole suite of websites and micro-sites designed to help promote the many and varied legal services they offer.
In early 2016, Rothera Dowson announced their merger with another long established firm, Young Sharp & Pearce and in early summer the two company’s made that merger official with the launch of their new brand restyle.
On this occasion Rothera Sharp opted to design and develop their logo “in-house” and their website development was placed with another agency, however they were still keen to enlist Baboons’ professional design skills to revisit the overall brand restyle.
For Baboon, working with their new logo design presented its own challenges. The use of “negative space” (in other words the “RS’ characters that break out of the roundel) in the logo dictates that it’s application would need to be carefully considered so that it could be easily interpreted across all media in a consistent way.
As with most things, simplicity is the key and so it was decided that the best option was to keep the options limited which would naturally reign in any desires to be too avant-garde.
Instead Baboon concentrated its efforts on the supporting elements that would appear alongside the logo as we felt that it was here that the “difference” in the brand restyle could be established. However, a key factor in the brief was that the client was keen to avoid using photography that featured actual in-house locations and members of staff. Historically they had used this approach but had found it too costly, especially when featured members of staff were no longer involved in the business. To this end we had to use “stock” photography which also meant that we would need to be a bit more creative with our approach.
Although, like most design agencies these days, Baboon subscribes to stock photography libraries such as Shutterstock or Fotolia, we’ve never been overly fond of simply using “stock” images as-they-are… in other words, we prefer to develop custom images using the photo library assets. This helps to ensure that the finished product has at least some level of originality and individuality!
This was achieved by creating a suite of “double exposure” style images that reinforced the sense of care, support and expertise that is the mainstay of the Rothera Sharp business.
What we were aiming to achieve was to highlight the solicitor/client relationship by visually linking the two parties but not necessarily directly. The result is a clean, minimal brand restyle that has both an air of establishment with a sense of the contemporary.
This design has been applied to the main corporate literature and to “Keep Me on The Road” which is the sub-branded Traffic and Transport Law division of the business and it is planned for it to be rolled out across all areas of the business.
If you would like more information about branding or any of our creative design services, please don’t hesitate to get in touch – For more information about Baboon, give us a call on 01159 503 956 for click to Make an Enquiry