Project Overview
Our brief was to create the brand for a new business venture for two partners – experts in regulatory economics. They primarily support utilities in the energy, gas, and water sectors providing strategy development, regulatory proposals, and economic analysis. As well as similar advice and support to other businesses, regulators, and government bodies.
They wanted a name that would position them in people’s minds as contemporary, intelligent, open, progressive, and engaging without being self-limiting. Their criteria for the brand identity were that it must exude strength and power while also being professional and approachable and resonate with high-achieving female leaders in a conservative yet dynamic regulatory environment.
We created their name and brand identity and developed it across key touch points, including their website design and build.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Kylie Gould – Director
Dan Clark – Creative Director
Louise Thomas – Strategy Director & Naming
Tracy Jack – Design Director
Monet Maher – Senior Designer
Jess Harris – Designer
Emmeline Cannan – Designer
Amy Wilson – Project Manager
Project Brief
The brief challenged us to create a name and brand identity for a new breed of regulatory economists that embodies confidence, leadership, expertise, and trust, while avoiding any hint of arrogance or aloofness. Ideally, the name needed to be a single word available as both .com and .com.au, resonating deeply with their target audience.
Our research into the industry and competitors showed a David and Goliath story, with competitors including the Big-4 consulting firms and other smaller but well-established players. This presented a prime opportunity to make a significant impact with a fresh and meaningful brand within their industry circle. Challenge accepted!
Recognising this landscape, we embarked on creating ideas for a name and brand identity that would deliver a contemporary brand designed to resonate deeply with this key audience.
Project Innovation/Need
The idea for the name New North came from the North Star, which holds nearly still while the entire northern sky moves around it. New North is the new North Star, a of beacon of guidance, stability, and leadership in the ever-changing regulatory landscape.
Following the successful naming project, our focus shifted to crafting a brand identity that connects their audience: ambitious, female-led teams striving for net-zero goals amidst complex challenges.
The conceptualisation began by analysing the letterforms in the name. A pivotal concept emerged with the creation of the 'N' device. Ingeniously designed using two ‘N’s, one solid and one negative space, culminating in an aspirational arrow symbolising upward progress and leadership.
In contrast to competitors' conventional imagery, which often depicted generic industry scenes or corporate environments, we saw this as a great opportunity to create a distinctive visual approach for New North. Our imagery evokes new horizons, new paths, new ways, always showing the vastness of the sky and all the possibilities that New North explores.
The color palette is derived from the sky and all her tones. From midnight to the glow of the morning sun. These muted and calm hues create a bold palette that offers strong contrast while incorporating warmer, softer, feminine tones.
The visual identity elements are complemented by a bold sans-serif wordmark, uniting the name "newnorth" into a cohesive identity that embodies reliability, expertise, and progressive leadership.
Design Challenge
The key design challenge was to find the right balance between the values they wished to convey and striking a meaningful connection with their main audience. The primary objective was to create a fresh and contemporary brand that distinctly connects with its main audience.
The brand values they wished to convey:
• strength, power, thought leadership
• problem-solving, expertise, creating value
• trustworthy, reliable, quality outcomes
• current and close to the action
• part of the client’s team.
The people they wanted to connect with:
• predominately female-led teams
• highly ambitious
• on a mission to achieve net-zero
• under high pressure to achieve good financial outcomes.
They wanted to stand out by appealing to their main target audience, female-led teams, and setting the right tone—it was important not to seem ‘private school’, ' old school', ' aloof', or' arrogant'.
Effectiveness
"We asked Creatik to create a name and brand that would convey our goals, separate from our personal identities. To us, the New North brand reflects the trust our clients place in us to solve their problems while also highlighting the current ‘finger on the pulse’ approach we take, distinguishing us from our more established competitors.
Throughout the journey, Creatik guided us through their process. This was very helpful, as we are not dedicated marketing or brand managers and were (and are) stretched juggling the work needed to keep our own clients happy while setting up our new business.
Creatik extracted all the ideas floating around between us (and we were not always entirely on the same page) and captured our goals, how we best support our customers, and how we wanted to distinguish ourselves from our competitors in a series of naming and branding concepts.
It’s been a success. Prior to this, our lack of a brand put us at a disadvantage in hiring staff (our number one risk to growth), limited the types of work we were asked to produce, and clients rarely called upon us to produce independent expert reports of our own. Since launching New North, we have hired two new economists, clients now refer to us as ‘New North’ and have already started to invite us to submit proposals for expert reports." - James Turnley, Director, New North Insights.
Graphic Design - Identity and Branding - Corporate
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the traditional or digital visual representation of ideas and messages. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
More Details