Kettley's Furniture Visual Identity
The BBC's business show 'Alex Polizzi - The Fixer' aims to help struggling family firms revitalise their business, so we were excited to be asked to design a new logo for one of the firms featured.
A key consultant on the show was Karl McKeever from Visual Thinking - a client of ours for more than 14 years. Karl asked us to help create a new identity for this small traditional, family-run furniture company to match and enable their ambitious new direction.
The Brief
Hullabaloo has built a reputation for sensitive rebranding, so this project made us the perfect choice. The client was still unsure of the value of rebranding and Karl needed a solution that would deliver all the impact and style he was looking to inject into the business, but without scaring off the more cautious members of the management team.
Our Solution
One of the dilemmas we often face with long established companies like Kettleys is the apparent conflict between creating a new look and retaining a 'familiar face'. Although the branding needed to reflect a modern, new approach, we were also keen to retain its core values of traditional quality, and we were conscious they also had a solid customer base who of course, we couldn't alienate.
Karl was working hard with the clients to help get past this apparent conflict, and it is something we do every day, so we were able to provide a range of options for the client to choose from - all of which breathed new life into the brand without trampling all over it's heritage.
Our solution used simple typography and iconic images to represent the different types of products offered in store, with a carefully chosen typeface forming the basis of the main logo to give a traditional structure to the logo but with a modern slant!
A strong, yet approachable colour palette, added real impact to the main signage, in-store point-of-sale material and external communications. The result is an identity which has real visual presence, and will provide a solid platform for the company to progress to a bold, new era...
Karl also also asked us to look at the branding for another company in the series - see our work for Props & Frocks
