Walker Partners Identity Design

Background

Walker Partners was on the brink of considerable growth, and planning some proactive sales activity targeting the marketing departments of household brands. Before sending out any sort of communications, our client was keen to get the look of his business just right. After all, you only get one chance to make that first impression. It was vital that the business’s communications added credibility through a professional look and feel.

Walker Partners carries out in depth analysis of marketing effectiveness through econometric modelling. Whilst competitors use the same techniques, Walker Partners’ key differentiator is the way in which the findings of the modelling process are presented to the client. Competitors tend to blast clients with stats and figures. Walker Partners provides answers in plain English to give a clear picture of what’s working and what’s not, helping marketers make informed decisions on the optimisation of their budget.

Values

Honest, clear, down-to-earth

Market

Central to the success of the identity was the need to make a connection with two quite different groups of people: the creative marketing team, and the more traditional and conservative finance team and CEOs.

The Solution

We needed to communicate clarity and simplicity through our design work. It was important for the identity to sit comfortably within the business world, conversely, it needed to stand out as being a bit edgy. The typeface is contemporary but still fit for use within a highly corporate environment.

Noticing that bar charts appeared quite frequently within the clients’ presentations, we took this imagery and added relevance by working a cityscape into the design. The final logo mark is an exact replication of the Canary Wharf cityscape.

You might see a graph, you might see the city’s skyline. The identity is a visual representation of what Walker Partners does best; the simple presentation of statistical data.

There’s nothing black and white about the work of Walker Partners, and dealing with creative folk, an injection of colour was vital. We went through a few colour scheme variations before settling on blue; corporate-friendly, but also synonymous with calm and clarity.

The branding is fit for purpose for application across all communication materials, working as well online as it does in print.

Copy

Walker Partners was keen to differentiate its offering and communicate its straight talking and down to earth ethos through concise, honest and plain-speaking copy. Competitors tend to go into great detail about the science of econometric modelling, websites typically include several lengthy, and fairly dry, case studies. Recognising that readers are likely to be time poor, the Walker Partners website copy gives confidence in the company’s expertise and ability to provide the solution, but cuts the waffle.