Mar 2009

There comes a time in most companies’ development when they look at themselves and realise their visual presentation no longer reflects who they are. It’s often a question of confidence – new companies want to look established and part of the crowd, but as they grow and prove their success they develop the confidence to stand apart and tell people who they really are. I believe Dominion have reached this point.

As external design ‘consultants’ our challenge was to work out what it was that Dominion had become; its brand DNA if you like and then translate this into an appropriate visual representation. To do this we spent time talking to some of the senior team to gain a better understanding of the business and where it was heading.

In the current climate what struck us was not just the idea that Dominion was trustworthy, secure and all those attributes that are more important than ever, but the idea that the business was about making often complex financial vehicles simple. Bringing transparency and clarity to its growing range of products and services.

We therefore devised a new brand identity for the business that reflected this and was as simple and confident as we could make it. Inspired by the language of John Pawson the minimalist architect who is quoted as saying ‘Good design is about as little design as possible. Leave out the unimportant in order to emphasise the important.’

The new logo is set in black (or white out of black) lettering – no symbol. Set in geometric capital letters to allow for large circular ‘O’s we have simply pulled the letters together overlapping many to suggesting a sense of unity and cohesion. It may be subliminal but it's nice to know it's there.

We also wanted to find a way to inject the ‘can do’ attitude we identified within the company. So on some, mainly internal items we have introduced the short form ‘DO’. We also used this idea to write a number of statements about Dominion such as ‘We bring clarity to everything we DO’ thereby introducing a set of messages to help build the Dominion brand going forward.

We have reduced the visual clutter by setting ‘DOMINION’ apart from the full legal name. But we did want to help suggest what the business was about, so we came up with the idea of creating a web address that doubles as a strap-line ‘expertsinwealth.com’.

We then expanded the design to create a visual language which could stretch across the entire range of applications from the website to business cards, exhibition banners to recruitment advertising. Based on the bold black and white look we also introduced a warm grey/gold to lend a sense of quality and a touch of warmth to some of the designs. We also decided to introduce a more elegant ‘serif’ typeface to compliment the clean lines of the logotype.

To help bring a touch of colour to the design we have introduced colour photography used within circles (inspired by the circular ‘O’s’ from the logotype). These range from naturally circular objects (the globe, a flower etc) to images that have been cropped to create circles. And finally to support the idea of Dominion as a people focused business we have had many of the Dominion staff photographed in black and white in informal ‘poses’. Many of these images can be seen within this website.

So the new Dominion brand identity is not just about a new logotype. It’s about creating a look and feel across all the Dominion communications that better reflects the personality and attributes of the company, and should help it to grow and thrive in the future.

By Paul Barlow, Founder & Creative Director at L&CO