Our New Brand

So what’s behind our new image and why and how did it come about?

The marketplace ICIS operate in is overloaded with practitioners and consultants with varying degrees of expertise and experience, all vying for attention. It was really important for ICIS to stand out from this crowd – as our business really does offer something unique to our clients. The trouble with the old image was that it looked the same as everyone else, so we decided things had to change. We embarked on a lengthy search to find the right business that could help us in our quest resulting in the commissioning of a Newcastle based branding agency called Fat Frog Design.

The main reason for choosing Fat Frog proved to be their passion, understanding and commitment to the project. They also made us stop and think about the way we communicate our business to our clients. The process started with Steve Blanks, Fat Fogs’ Creative Director, attending one of the ICIS workshop programmes on ‘bereavement and loss’. “the one thing that struck me after attending the workshop was the way a sensitive issue such as bereavement was dealt with. Antonys’ approach was unique, compassionate and highly engaging. This experience with ICIS, inspired our initial concepts for the brand image” Steve said.

The process of developing our brand then took to the next stage, whereby Fat Frog analysed all their research taken from the marketplace, competitors, our offering and where we wanted to position ourselves, to produce a number of possible design options. There was, however, only one clear winner.

So what does the new image stand for?

The newly designed logo uses a unique typeface that has been hand drawn, rather than computer generated, to reflect the individual nature of how ICIS work with our clients. The image of a butterfly is used as a symbol. Steve Blanks says “the butterfly seemed perfect as its’ lifecycle involves a process of metamorphosis and change from cocooned to freedom – we felt that this metaphor was very applicable to ICIS. The image can be used small as an instantly recognisable stamp on a letterhead and business card, or it can be enlarged to create an abstract wing shape on all other publicity and marketing material. When used as an abstract image all the detailed features of the wing can be seen, this detail is both vibrant and colourful. The colour scheme of the image uses large swathes of refreshing blue, purple and aqua. To enhance the colours even further the ICIS folders have been printed so that the shape is picked out with a gloss spot varnish. The end result is not just striking, it is meaningful and well thought out”.

The new image has now been in place for several months and has been extremely well received. It is a symbol and representation of our commitment to excellence in what ICIS do.