Project Overview

The Customer Experience Company (CEC) has gone through a period of astonishing growth and enhanced capability over the past few years. The feeling was that the company had ‘grown up’, having matured to a point where it had outgrown its current ‘shell’ and was ready for its next incarnation. The team had been living with a visual brand identity and work environment that no longer seemed to fit, and the time was right to review the core purpose of the organisation in order to make sure all the right foundations were in place to propel the business into the future.

Organisation

The Customer Experience Company

Team

Creative Director + identity design – Kerry Hewitson, The Customer Experience Company.
With huge thanks to everyone in the CEC team who contributed during the rebrand process.

Project Brief

CEC integrates strategy, human-centred design, empathy, technology and innovation with business consulting and delivery. The way CEC works, the work that’s done and the way the business is run, is adaptable, transformational and always evolving. CEC wanted all this to be reflected and accommodated in their new visual identity and their new workspace.

Project Innovation/Need

Design thinking and human-centred design are at the core of many of the services CEC deliver. To obtain more robust and successful design solutions, some of the principles and techniques used in this method of working were integrated into the brand development process.

This was no ordinary ‘client’ situation. CEC is comprised of designers who are used to working in a highly collaborative way, so this collaborative approach was woven into the brand development process to help manage idea progression, solve conflict and gain agreement. Whilst it may at times have been awkward and meant inching forward through the development process, it achieved general agreement every step of the way, without compromising design integrity. It also built a lot of testing and iteration into the process, ironing out what could have been issues down the track. The result was a well-considered, well thought through solution which hit the ground running and has been highly successful in implementation.

Design Challenge

False starts: Previous unsuccessful attempts had been made to articulate the next stage of CEC’s brand expression. The development process therefore was taken ‘back to basics’ and a solid base of research and understanding was formed on which to develop ideas. Additional design thinking techniques were then integrated into the brand development process to work through any sticking points and achieve a more robust and successful result.

Flexibility: CEC works on a wide range of projects, across a broad range of industries, involving a myriad of subjects. The intent of the visual identity system was to develop a base framework flexible enough to accommodate and enhance all the different stories, strategies and results required to be communicated across a range of deliverables and platforms, whilst being strong enough to retain the CEC feel and identity. The system developed allows layering of elements and adjustable components to build whatever may be needed. 

Robustness: The design system implemented needed to be straightforward and flexible enough to allow any of the CEC team to develop materials. Everyone at CEC is a brand guardian and ambassador, and everyone gets hands-on to develop and deliver materials. So, in practical terms, a system was needed that was intuitive to implement, and hard to mess up. The brand development collaboration and review process ensured concepts were well tested before rolling out the final toolkit to the team – as a result the ID system has been holding up to the rigours of ‘real life’.

Effectiveness

The CEC rebranding project has been incredibly successful on a number of levels:

It has defined and confirmed the organisational purpose and values, and these elements are now genuinely seen in action in CEC’s business day to day – from defining how CEC recruits team members, to how business partners are chosen and how people in the organisation operate and behave.

The logo symbol developed has significant meaning to the team at CEC and has been adopted with eagerness and pride. [The ‘CE’ script in the symbol represents the human element of CEC’s work – from the way CEC designers draft thinking on a whiteboard, to the way they collaborate and guide clients along a journey of discovery and transformation. The more structured form of the superscript ‘c’ represents the analytical, measurement and delivery part of the CEC process. Together, the elements form an equation – CEC solves problems, and they do it in a unique way, integrating people, design and technology.] What has been surprising is the overwhelming reaction to the logo from people external to the organisation, with clients keen to have a discussion about its meaning, expressing how much they connect with it and even Instagramming photos of the illuminated logo signage.

The new visual identity, integrated with a new custom-designed working environment, have provided CEC with a platform that supports and elevates how the team think, what they want to achieve, and the calibre of work they create.