Raine & Co. was in much need of a fresh new look when they approached me. They had no online presence and the logo was 30 years old. Whilst researching the chartered surveyors market, I realised it was overrun by masculine brands trying to overpower each other. The brief was to give Raine & Co. a softer, more personable feel with a luxurious colour palette.
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I decided to use the popular geometric sans-serif Poppins typeface with kerning applied. I then customised the 'Co.' referencing victorian Company symbols. The result is a robust and reliable modern twist on a traditional brand mark. Two alternate versions of the Raine & Co. logo were created for versatility.
The icon was created for situations where it may not be possible to use the logo. For example, where the there is only a small amount of space available like a website favicon.
Poppins is a geometric sans-serif with a fairly high x-height. Designed by the Indian Type Foundry. Each letterform is nearly monolinear, with optical corrections applied to stroke joints where necessary to maintain an even typographic color.
This typeface evokes the modernist style of the early 20th century, however, it feels less formal than, say, Futura. In lowercase, Montserrat, is a font with a nice large x-height and a lot more character than Arial or Helvetica.
Blush Pink and Red Wine colours were chosen as the primary colour palette with Deep Green as an alternative colour to switch out with Red Wine when needed. These colours together evoke a sense of luxury with a subtle feminine touch - a much needed contrast to other competitors in the field of chartered surveyors.
Throughout the Branding process strict RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) branding guidelines had to be adhered to, restricting use, size, positioning and colour of the RICS logo and lion on stationary, websites and emails.
Many versions and iterations were visualised before these final 2 were chosen. It was important that the style and shape reflected the website but also allowed for the actual content (in this case text) to change in size and to still fit within the template.
The Website was created using Wix.com, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop. Wix was chosen for the speed of creation and the ability for the client to easily update sections of the site in the future. Illustrator was used to create custom section wave shapes as well as icons. Photoshop was used to edit photos, this was really important as many photos were old and lacked visual interest.
A core part of the website was to show service case studies. These help build trust with potential customers and therefore increase engagement.
