ARCH Project Intro
This project showcases the branding project for ARCH Investments.
ARCH Investments invest in residential housing across Northern England.
They approached us in search of a strong brand identity for their company which would appeal to their end clients, buyer and renters, and more importantly their partners and investors.
From the start we understood this project had to be thought out properly with a discovery session because we had a two important and individual audience categories to focus on. We had to break down each audience to understand specific demographics, personas and end goal. This allowed us to dive deeper into understanding competition and ensuring the branding project had correct market fit along with the design requests from ARCH Investments.
Now we had gone through the discovery, we had a strategy to implement going forward.
First part of the brand identity was working on the Logo. ARCH Investments brought some ideas to the table in terms of style of design and colour schemes, but not the design itself (apart from not having a house/building design in it). The image they wanted to achieve with their brand was summed up into three words, "Sharp" "Premium" and Confident". It was important not to get "Premium" confused with "Luxury". It wasn't luxury they were going for, but more higher quality professional standards. This was an important consideration which could impact the design process. In terms of design, they wanted some sort of "ARCH" present, but not something that looks completely typical and obvious. It had to match their Sharp, Premium and Confident image. The preferred colour schemes were geared towards the navy blue and gold / rose gold colours. Again, being careful not to come across as "Luxury" which tends to use a lot of Foil Gold white and black with minimal sharp style.
Below you will see the very first conceptual designs for the ARCH Investments logo.
First looking at the ARCH investment brand mark designs concepts.
Our first revisions/concepts are always presented in monochrome. Reason for this is a logo should stand out and be recognised without the need of colour. Being recognised in monochrome means your logo design has been impactful on the audience. Another reason is to help you stick to more unique and minimal designs. Logo designs which require the colours to be present in order to see an image can be very difficult to implement effectively across branded material, collateral and other applications. SO making it work in black and white is a powerful and effective way to begin.
Next up you will see the selection of typography for this project. Both the brand mark and typography we're presented forth to ARCH Investments with the initial focus of "Sharp" "Premium" and Confident" in mind. Code light, Aqua Grotesque, Fabada and Rosarina were among the selections by us.
After the first revision we then began to implement on feedback given to provide the second revision which included focus on colour and some new / improved design concepts.
This design below was the leading preference in terms of brand colours and typography. The brand mark design however required a slight tweak...
From the feedback we added an ARCH in the centre of the original design. Below you'll see the final logo design for ARCH investments. The first design shows the original colours on a Navy background with gold brand mark of the ARCH and typography, Code light. The second logo is simply the first but applied to a transparent background. The third is the second variation which was requested. It's the same colour navy as the original background colour but was requested as printing smaller versions on white paper especially would make it more visible as a navy colour.
With this project we also provided some collateral designs and worked on a stylescape which is shown broken down below but also shown as a whole at the top of this project post.
Both ARCH Investments and the 9 Designs team were really extremely impressed and proud of the project outcome. We're proud to say the brand had a positive impact with both audience groups as ARCH Investments have successfully partnered and worked with investors to provide high quality homes and to renters and buyers.
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