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As you would expect when you work from a business centre, you get to meet a great variety of companies and organisations - especially when you have been there for over 11 years. However, even though you may work closely together geographically, there is no obligation for those businesses to work with you, unless of course you can prove yourself to be worthy. One such company is Smart Citizen, a business that provides keyless entry card systems - particularly for the public sector.

As both of us are former residents of Penstraze Business Centre, they were of course aware of Aawen, but also recognised that they needed to select the best agency to help them with their design needs regardless of any loyalty they may feel to past acquaintances. Fortunately, after a meeting with them and of course following their own research, they recognised that we would be the ideal match to help them achieve their design needs.

Our first task was to establish the overall project objectives and then to help determine what specific elements we would need to create to help achieve those objectives.

As with many similar projects, we first scrutinised the clients existing branding to see if it was appropriate for their market and for their ambition moving forward. After agreeing that it needed a overhaul rather than a minor tweak, we began work on creating the company logo. Working through our tried and tested development process, we were able to compile a shortlist of potential logo designs that the client could market test. Once all the data was analysed, we applied the desired modifications to the preferred design which then resulted in the new brand theme for the company (logo, icon, colour and typeface styles).

Quick on the heals of finalising this fundamental branding asset, we set about rolling it out across the breath of marketing materials the client would need to employ. We worked on signage designs, stationery (particularly a high-specification foil-blocked business card), report covers and report page templates plus of course a customer facing company website (the website design is all complete and is due to replace the old site in the next few weeks).

Whilst each of these different elements requires a different approach, they all must be underpinned with the same icon, colour and type theme - which of course we have now created and which now quickly enabled the marketing materials to gel together in a consistent, appealing and progressive manner.

Now that this phase of development has ended, the client will be able to look back on the results of the process and begin collecting data to measure its impact - has it resulted in more enquiries, or better quality enquiries, has it created greater opportunities in new markets that were difficult to attain previously? I, like Smart Citizen, am keen to see how well this new range of materials perform in the coming months and am confident we shall all be toasting its notable success.

During the Spring, we were approached by Primary PC, a Helston based IT company, to help them contact new and existing customers to inform them of their services. Whilst we agreed that whatever we created could be sent via email to their database, we decided that in this instance a traditional direct-mail option may be the most appropriate method of communication. We therefore designed and printed a leaflet for the company which they then mailed to a particular target group and also used the artwork as a base for an email and an advertisement. Shortly after the campaign, the company received a significant increase in web-traffic that ultimately led to greater sales providing a great return on their investment.

Having seen the financial benefits of this route, we were once again commissioned to create two similar direct-mail leaflets. This time aimed at promoting their maintenance skills and service level agreements. Hot off the press, these leaflets will be winging their way out in to the public domain in the next few days, so keep a look out for some fantastic offers (as well as the fantastic leaflet design of course)!

"Having engaged Aawen's design services a couple of times now, I can thoroughly recommend them. Their professional approach to understanding your business and then applying that to a design that fits is second to none! They delivered to our exact requirements, giving us a quality product which we felt greatly enhanced our company branding. They have a very fast turnaround on orders and we'll definitely be using them again."

Nige Buxton
Primary PC Solutions Ltd

KBW Properties, Chartered Surveyors in Gloucestershire, were looking to revamp their website, part of this new look included new illustrations to reflect their core principles.

The brief was to create sporting silhouette illustrations based upon the values of the business: Knowledge, Strategy, Results.

Through consultation with the client we arrived at a set of images which they felt reflected their values. Based upon these we created silhouette illustrations to be used on the website, the artwork was provided in vector format meaning that translation to large format print, and any colour scheme changes in future should prove to be little or no obstacle.