ideas

Agencies are notorious for not walking the talk when it comes to their own brand and websites. It’s pretty sad when you think about it but let’s face it, agencies get pretty darn busy taking care of everyone else’s brands. iiD has made a big jump forward today at 4:30pm by refreshing our website (ideasindigital.com) along with a completely new logo and identity system. The partners (Matt and I) spent some time thinking about the image we were after, the sort of clients we’d like to attract and the sort of message we want to bring to the market.

We Started with a New Message

Before thinking about a logo, tagline or web design, we spent some time figuring out who we wanted to be and become in the future. iiD is still a small agency but Matt and myself have a combined experience of over 2 decades in the digital agency space. At the same time, we are an agency that combines strategy, creative, social design and technology which is a big offering so we need a message that goes along with that. We came up with the simple yet important message “a digital connections agency”. To explain what that means we describe ourselves in the About Us page as:

iiD (“ideas in digital”) is a new breed of full service digital agency that builds connections through multi-platform strategy, highly usable UI, social design and emerging technology to enable what what we call ‘friendship media’. Put simply, we create connections in digital that engage the right users with brands where and how they like them.

Designing a Logo Mark to Last

Designing our own company logo was a lot harder than it looked. The logo is everywhere – your business cards, your website, your Facebook page, your door, your stationary, you name it. It’s the face of the company and represents the brand. So we thought it should be something we really like, has longevity and others will take seriously. Matt and I spent a whole day going back and forth with type, color and symbols before we decided to go with a very minimal, bold approach using just type, in this case the font Meta Bold. We also struck on the idea that only the D made capital with the dots of the two i’s in green made for a human yet innovative image we were after. We think the two i’s look like people and connote the “connections” we build for brands. The blue represents intelligence and strategy while the green is about fresh ideas and innovation.

From ID to Business Cards

The logo’s solid presence and color influenced the identity design for all of our collateral and website. Like the logo, we chose to design our business card as an ultra clean and white base with the logo at dynamic scale and the information on the card kept uncluttered and easy to read. The back side has our tagline (“a digital connections agency”) and a QR code with which when scanned leads users to our About Us page to learn more about iiD.

iiD Website Refresh

Being a digital agency, we gave our website renewal the greatest attention. We believe our service lies exactly between a digital-social product and brand world.  Consumers find both relevant but agencies mainly lean towards the flashy brands side of things. We designed the iiD site to live comfortably in the world of Facebook and Google+ in its stripped down, functional look-and-feel. The new creativity springs from these user generated UIs and that was the image we wanted to convey. On our top page, we used elegant creative commons photos of the Getty Center in LA to serve as backdrops for our brands messages and lead-ins to the main sections. We thought the organic lines of the architecture perfectly captured a creative logic that iiD is all about while being of beauty. The section pages user ajax accordion-style content reveals to keep the pages clean and readers to view only what interests them.

Your Feedback Welcome We’d love to hear thoughts about our new ID, business cards and website. Also, if you need any advice on your own company’s brand image, feel to give us a shout on  our contact page. Also, free to give us a call at 415-738-0738.

– Lance Shields