In November and December of last year I worked as part of a large team of senior brand creatives on Siegel+Gale's branding of the restructuring of Adecco. Idea is Adecco's technology consulting arm, formed from the merger of Idea Integration, Glotel, Idea and Ajilon Consulting.

As part of Adecco, a global HR firm, Idea puts a strong emphasis on finding and maintaining the right people for the job. The merged firm makes the best of the exemplary track records of the four companies in IT solutions for large organisations. The newly formed Idea sees itself as the 'no BS' Information Technology solutions firm that 'cuts to the chase' and just gets the job done at no unnecessary cost, and without the long drawn-out consulting procedures that plague the industry. Idea makes smart choices from tried and tested technologies and off-the-shelf solutions and services, and works to demystify technology in a version of consulting on IT technology that they consider 'the real deal' for their clients.

Idea presents itself as an extension to their clients' businesses but also as a point of completion in terms of finding the most cost effective IT solutions. This is the primary idea in the Idea brandmark. The dot indicates an extension much like a computer file extension and after the dot the name stands as a point of finality.

For the first time as a senior brand creative none of my initial seed ideas were put forward to the client. My route was cut close to the end of the concepts development process and I undertook to build the dot idea route as a brand (and as it appears in my portfolio); for which the original seed idea was originated by another senior designer on the team.

Although the initial seed idea wasn't mine I was almost entirely responsible for the creative authorship of the sophisticated brand messaging system and the final designed form of the overall Idea brand identity. The brand messaging formula as well as the content put forward to the client produced an 'aha' moment internally after the strategist, at first puzzled, realised the strength of the idea. And, judging by the proliferation of ideas for the messaging on the Idea website it seems it did not take much to convince the client that our idea for their firm was a good one.

Click on the image above to see the entry in my portfolio.

Towards the end of last year David Airey approached me to submit work for his latest blog, Identity Designed. Identity Designed marks a significant shift away from what I call dedicated logo design towards a more comprehensive brand identity consulting for online publicity-oriented designers such as David.

David originated and still maintains the widely publicised and largely successful blog Logo Design Love. The name says it all. Logo Design Love tends to attract young logo-obsessed designers of which there appear to be untold scores online, hoping, no doubt, that their logo design talents will get noticed.

David and I have had a number of email interactions and I've participated on Logo Design Love on occasion, mostly in relation to the declaration that logos are dead by Simon Manchipp. I like to think that David's shift in focus towards brand identity design has been influenced by the position I've been advocating about the limits of design and the relevancy of brand identity design and consulting, and that ideas about brands are becoming much more than logos in the mainstream media as a result.

Logo Design Love still has a place and, impressively, last year Peachpit published Logo Design Love the book, which also featured one of my projects, Kerling, and has gone on to be a top-selling design book on Amazon. I've recently bought the book and will feature Kerling as a published piece in my portfolio sometime soon.

The origins of Identity Designed aside, last Friday I submitted one of my latest start-up brand identity projects, Asterisk Investments. Although this opens me up to naive criticism it's been great to demonstrate the project somewhere other than on my website. I'm very proud of this brand identity as the firm is an exciting new type of investment offering catering for high-net worth private investors and looks set to achieve extraordinary results.

I believe that the brand identity I created for Asterisk investments is particularly insightful and demonstrates (and enhances) the strengths of the firm. Identity Designed has provided me with a good opportunity to showcase just how a brand identity is much more than what design can do for brands.

Click on the image above to see Asterisk Investments as featured on Identity Designed.

Several months after successfully delivering a brand identity for Asterisk's Forex Hedge Fund in February last year Asterisk made a dramatic change to their offering that required a re-think of the brand I created for them.

Instead of aiming for a mass online market dealing in Forex markets with no minimum investment, the new offering was to be aimed at high net-worth private investors with a minimum investment of 100 000 Euros. The new offering would still trade on Forex markets but the bulk of trades (90%) would be in Futures. And so, I recommended that we 'premium-ise' the Asterisk brand.

Although Asterisk was born of a Forex concept we decided to retain the name and I was commissioned to 'premium-ise' the brand identity and find a new brand-idea and create a more comprehensive look & feel. I delivered two routes and the brand identity concept expressing the brand-idea 'Trading Insight' was selected.

I created a new symbol that is a more sophisticated interpretation of an asterisk, whereas the previous symbol was unambiguously an asterisk and more suited to a mass market. The new symbol requires a dynamic presentation of a simple line-drawn asterisk revealed as circles side-on to grasp the fact that the symbol is an Asterisk. The static symbol of the brandmark is at a stage somewhere before the circles in perspective open completely to form a complete circle, and the resulting sequence forms a sophisticated visual pattern for use as a premium brand identity element. The dynamic presentation of the symbol is required to grasp the insight that the new symbol is, in fact, an asterisk.

The 'Trading Insight' brand-idea is an interpretation of the insights required to trade in the manner in which the new investment fund is to become known. The re-imagined Asterisk brand trades in Futures using a proprietary and copyright protected trading system that utilises sophisticated trading techniques and computer software to enable traders to trade visually – to literally trade in sight. This trading system gives Asterisk's traders a real advantage over competing investment funds and so as an expression of the 'Trading Insight' brand-idea the public-facing brandline is 'The insight advantage'.

The 'premium-ised' version of the Asterisk brand was launched to private investors in September last year. For the launch I also oversaw the production of a high-production values brochure. I wrote the bulk of the content, all the bold headline messages and worked with an editor who edits for the Financial Times to sharpen-up and enhance the body-text.

Click on the brandmark or dynamic symbol pattern above to view the project as an entry in my portfolio. I've also included the previous Asterisk Forex brand identity to demonstrate the different versions of the brand as expressions of distinctly different brand strategies.

In November last year I was called in to Siegel+Gale to help develop brand identity concept routes for the new Modis. Three routes were already in place when I joined but the brandmarks for all the routes weren't quite working for the senior Creative Director.

In light of the now ubiquitous and largely useful notion that a logo is not a brand it's important to point out that a brandmark is part of many other types of marks that make up a brand experience. I develop all the types of marks that work in concert to describe a brand identity (in order to do justice to, enhance or even determine the brand experience on offer) but the design of the primary mark is my particular speciality. This component of my skill-set is especially useful when budgets are tight and only a limited set of brand-marks are required.

Had I not been committed to Allen International I would've been involved earlier in the project when thoughts determining the main thrust of the routes were more critical. Constrained by time and the ideas already in place I concentrated on developing brandmarks only.

The route for which I'd designed the mark above was all about connections. I proposed that the identity idea be 'Uncommon Connections' and not just 'Connections'. The strategist felt that although insights are indeed well-presented as 'Uncommon Connections' that 'Uncommon' might be seen to be negative and so 'Exceptional Connections' made the final cut.

Click on the brandmark above to go to the entry in my portfolio. I had no hand in choosing the colour so I've presented the chosen brandmark and concept brandmarks in black and white.

After internal discussions and discussions with potential investors a final choice from the three routes I presented in February last year was made by the newly named start-up Forex Hedge fund, Asterisk. The route chosen was the most straightforward concept and appeared to make sense for a mass online market.

The idea related most directly to the asterisk used to denote foreign goods, a conceptual parallel for trading in foreign currencies – and the return on investments (ROI) made trading in the differences between currencies. Click on the small visuals above to view the Asterisk case study, where you can see the overall process as well as download the full concept presentation.

The brandline 'Maximising Returns' suggests that returns on investments are maximised by Asterisk. It suggests that going for a mass market returns ie. that 'going big' returns. And, it is also a potential subliminal prompt for customers to 'go big' with their investments.

Working as a freelancer in 1999, Dragon contracted me to design the new identity for the re-branding of Booker Foodservice. Booker was a dusty and tired business brand in a stagnant and extremely traditional sector. A radical re-thinking of the positioning and the type of brand was necessary. Dragon (now Dragon Rouge) found an extaordinary solution in the alphanumeric keystroke combination that spells out food on a mobile keypad.

F - 3 - O - 6 - O - 6 - D - 3

Conceptually this is very clever as the idea is beyond the gimmick of remembering a phone number, which was never intended, or ever used. The idea falls in line with the sort of services expected of business-to-business brands. It's a behind-the-scenes idea for a behind-the-scenes brand. The business is about the distribution of high quality ingredients to the food industry. The business is about foodservice and not the business of making food. Also, conceptually, the mobile phone represents communication and mobility of the future (a 'prediction' now proving true) and the mobile phone idea offered an alignment for a new type of foodservice brand going somewhere exciting.

After Dragon's rebrand of Booker, 3663 went on to become the most dynamic and successful player in the sector. It's been suggested that it's not Tesco eating up Britain, it's a brand you've probably never heard of, 3663.

The brand appears to have rejuvenated the industry and even to have spawned a couple of imitators. With a national fleet of over 600 lorries on the roads throughout Britain and major depots throughout the country the brand gets a lot of exposure with a high rate of recognition and recall even among the lay population. It also has a very good reputation as an employer. In the foodservice sector it would seem that the brand lives up to its original brandline as the 'First for foodservice'.

I'm all for identity changes that demonstrate an improvement in the brand experience on offer, even of identities that I've designed. 'Fresh off the boat' in '99 I knew about corporate identity and had managed to design the identity of a major IT brand in South Africa but I was new to proper heavy-weight strategic brand consulting. Perhaps, naively, I made a few obvious design errors, the swoosh being one. And, admittedly, the rather awkward relationship of the name to the brandline. But, the concept was so strong the design only needed to carry the idea and my solution fitted better than any of the others on offer. The double six was important and the colour change and direction of the swooshes helped people to say the name as Three Double Six Three.

However, despite some misgivings about my original design the new identity is not an improvement, despite my obvious bias. At least the original was sound in pure design terms. The brandmark could be easily reduced to one colour and etched into the blade of a knife, for example. And, the design was clear and unashamedly a swoosh, which, arguably, lies outside the design cliché because of the strength of the idea in the name. The new swoosh is an obfuscation and although it's got a superficially attractive transparency it looks like it's been designed by a designer who didn't take design school all that seriously.

In addition, the new brandline 'Truly, tasty... together' indicates a significant misunderstanding of the relationship of the brand identity to the business. The brand is about distribution to businesses who provide food. Hotels, restaurants and fast food outlets contract 3663 to provide the ingredients and although 3663 does provide ready-made meals to these businesses it is these businesses who carry the need to be seen to provide a taste experience. The new brandline is a consumer facing brandline and it does not make sense in a business-to-business environment.

Also, the cost of implementing the new identity doesn't make sense. Three Double Six Three is a huge brand and the brandmark appears, not only on a huge fleet of trucks that will require new livery but throughout the business on a large scale. An update of the 3663 brand may be due but such a radical change appears ill-conceived. It seems that someone at 3663 is going to learn the tough lesson of not employing top-line brand consultants. And, the sad truth of this is that because the brand is so big it will probably be a long time before someone realises the mistake.

Click on the before brandmark to go to the entry in my portfolio or click on the after brandmark to got to the new 3663 website.

As part of my standard start-up package I make allowance for a day's worth of my time for generating brand names. Out of ten days in total I recommend a maximum of two days for naming, considering that an extra day usually takes time away from the precious creative brand design stage and tends to delay the final deliverables. The design stage requires a minimum of six days exclusive of all the brand consulting and final artwork necessary to deliver the core components of a brand identity.

The start-up hedge fund identity I was commissioned to create needed a name and after a day's worth of my time generating names we settled on Asterisk. Quorus was a name I invented and was shortlisted (and chosen by my client) as a strong contender. I was extremely disappointed to discover that an existing fund was already using the name.

Asterisk is derived from the Greek word 'asterikos' which means little star. It's also a symbol for multiplication, represents the exponential and marks special top grade A (A*, A-star) as distinguished from grade A. A* was also a potential abbreviation for the fund. Asterisks are also generally used to mark out notable exceptions as per the visual from the presentation above. Click on the image above to go to the Asterisk case study were you can download the naming presentation should you want to look more closely at the format.

Asterisk is also particularly relevant to Forex as it is used to denote foreign goods. Our interpretation of this is that foreign currencies can also be considered as foreign goods. The 'foreign-ness' of the goods is not so important but the fact that the fund trades on the difference in the exchange value of foreign currencies. Asterisk also includes the word 'risk' which we thought was a strength because risk is an inherent part of investments. We believed that Asterisk could be treated in a manner that suggests it's a remarkable fund that manages risk exceptionally well.

The naming process I offer is purely generative and doesn't include existing usage or legal checks. It relies on the pursuit of original creative naming solutions, the idea that any suitable name can be owned in the manner in which it is treated and that naming choices should be viewed in terms of how much effort is likely to be required to assert ownership in a particular industry sector.

In late 2009 I was approached to develop a brand identity for an investment program based on sporting arbitrage. However, due to technical challenges and laws regarding betting, the project turned into an online hedge fund dealing on Foreign Exchange (Forex) markets with no minimum investment required.

The main objective was to instill confidence in experienced as well as first-time traders, in competition to the High Yield Investment Programs (HYIPs) available online. HYIPs is an industry that suffers from an extremely poor reputation as most offers are scams. This new venture was to distance itself as much as possible from HYIPs.

After numerous email exchanges and a single Skype messenger chat I was commissioned to develop a name and brand identity. Notably, I had never spoken to the client in order to secure the commission. It seems that my emails were enough to instill confidence in what has proved to be a rewarding business relationship. Perhaps, fittingly, this remote treatment from my client was some sort of confidence test reflective of the task at hand. A task that was to create a secure and robust online Forex trading brand backed by ambitious but private principle traders determined to create a credible investment experience for a mass market.

As there are a number of stages and significant strategic changes to the outcome of this client relationship I'll post a commentary on the evolution of this project in news entries to follow. Click on the image above to see the project entry in my portfolio.

Originally intended as a high volume coffee outlet in selected retail spaces in Cape Town, Jooma is building brand awareness by bringing coffee to the people. To this end Jooma has designed, engineered and developed a highly specialised mobile vending unit called the JoomVU.

Jooma's maiden run began in November last year with a successful launch at the Good Food and Wine Show in Durban where many exhibitors as well as exhibition goers included Jooma in their daily schedules. Jooma also made its presence known at the Urban Rage Mountain Biking festival recently.

I've added an image section to the portfolio entry for Jooma on this website. Click on the image above to see images of Jooma in action.