A couple of months ago Realise were awarded the contract to re-brand and build a new website for Juniper Innovations, a leading IT consultancy in warehousing, logistics and IT strategy. We met their managing director Richard Knight when we worked together on a new product distribution assessment.
At some point during that project Richard and our MD Andrew ended up in a hot debate on the value of branding, after which Richard announced that he’d been planning to update the Juniper logo and that he wanted us to pitch alongside others. A few more (enjoyable) consultations and a proposal later, Juniper awarded us the job to do both the brand re-fresh and website.
Juniper are an interesting company who are incredibly good at delivering ‘out of the box’ but sensible innovation. ‘Out of the box’ is an over used term that we’d normally refrain from, but in this case it’s true. Juniper regularly work on IT projects with serious global companies like P&G and are no strangers to the complex interrelated nature of IT issues within large organisations. They have more than 20 examples where they have been asked to fix or update some minor IT issue, but then through skilful probing have uncovered the real problem, which is invariably far deeper, more urgent and unrecognised. They of course have then been able to provide creative, sensible solutions, both removing the original issue all together and far exceeded the envisaged performance improvement.
For example, when a department of a large global client asked Juniper to rewrite some database reports on staff performance, this appeared to be a relatively straight forward job which they could have just done well and moved on from. However with a little bit more questioning, Juniper realised that this department’s real problem was strategic purpose and over staffing. So instead of a staff performance report with questionable benefits, Juniper provided planning tools and even assisted with identifying and moving staff who would be better off in other positions within the company. This brave rethink helped a struggling department refocus and go on to out perform their targets.
So you can see by this example that Juniper are not your typical IT consultancy run by tecchies, but a group of highly innovative and sharp minded entrepreneurs supported by top tecchies, with solid project management and delivery. Their calm incisive vision, with solid delivery is an exciting combination which we were keen to show through in their new branding.
Well of course, we’d love to bore you to tears with a detailed account of the process we then went through, but let’s cut straight to the results. Below you can see their original logo, which is a good name, with promising colours. But the boxy serifed logo type was overly traditional and combined with a busy photo of berries that was hard to reproduce. Overall it wasn’t saying “calm clear thinking, creative ideas and dependable delivery”. On the right you can see the new version. Which one do you think gets their message across?:
The new logo has a much simpler berry – an interesting shape that is not quite a circle, in “innovation blue”. The j cuts into the circle to symbolise their incisiveness, cutting through boundaries. The logo type is a modern font, clean but fairly sturdy in black to symbolise solidity. And the strap-line reminds you of their main benefit. Fairly straight forward!
Richard’s comment on all of this was:
I was really impressed with how passionate these guys were about branding and their process. This wasn’t some designery sticking plaster, they really wanted to get to the bottom of what we are and get that across to our people. Realise’s method is a really interesting blend of science and touchy feely people stuff, wrapped up in creative design. Plus it was a bonus they could do it quickly – and for what we got, at incredibly good value. I am delighted with the results. In fact since the site launch we’ve already picked up a major new contract on the back of how impressed our client was with our ‘new look’.
Richard Knight, MD Juniper Innovations.
To see how we then applied this branding and colour scheme to their website have a look at the Juniper Innovations IT consultancy website. Enjoy!
Realise’s Product Design Innovation & Branding Service
Tags: Branding, Consultancy, IT, Logo, Web Design
[...] and prototyping, and branding. We naturally think they are great because they produced the recently redesigned Juniper Innovations branding, during which they were very creative, professional and a pleasure to work [...]
Interested in Activating your Brand for a Second Life? Can The SLAgency help launch interactive events in Second Life for your company? Let’s discuss.
That’s interesting. Our good friend and client Codexx – http://www.codexx.com – have an office in Second Life which has been an interesting experiment. But is it worth it now? My understanding is that people are leaving Second Life in droves, and all the fancy offices that corporations set up are disappearing. Perhaps you can prove otherwise?
There are certainly a lot of details like that to take into consideration. That is a great point to bring up. I offer the thoughts above as general inspiration but clearly there are questions like the one you bring up where the most important thing will be working in honest good faith. I dont know if best practices have emerged around things like that, but I am sure that your job is clearly identified as a fair game.
In regards to Juniper Innovations – New Branding for Budding IT Consultancy Realise Design Blog, I’d have to say what a great post! Thanks very much