New Course
Branding a startup
Founding a company is an all-consuming task requiring complete dedication from everyone involved. We know what that's like and how important it is to embody your vision in a tangible identity.
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THE PROJECT

An identity that embodies the approach

NewCourse is a niche healthcare quality improvement consultancy. Their mission: to bring sustainable improvement to healthcare organisations worldwide. NewCourse focuses on building capacity and capability that delivers lasting impact and lays the groundwork for ongoing improvement beyond their engagement. A legacy of improvement. Their model and lean approach is built around mutual partnership, delivered by sector specialists with a tailored approach to their clients’ needs, and aims to avoid wasted consultancy time.

Our challenge was to create an identity that reflected their unique approach and support them in their new business activities aimed at a variety of prospective clients.

‘. . . It’s been an education and incredibly worthwhile exercise for me to do even without the two concepts you have produced, both of which I think could have been refined to a final “product”.  The elements you have pulled out are exactly what I want to put in the minds of people I approach and am in conversation with.. . .’

Alf Theodorou
CEO NewCourse healthcare

Read Alf’s full testimonial

THE PROCESS

Contextual awareness

Whether you’re starting a business or rebranding what you do, it’s personal. No one knows what you’re about as well as you do, but boiling it down to it’s most compelling elements is hard. We follow a rigorous creative process, which starts with helping you create a strong brief. With NewCourse we held a series of workshops and feedback sessions to unlock the information we needed.

THE PROCESS

Articulating difference

Together with the team we analysed their competitors and the larger organisations their business would seek to challenge in the years ahead. We completed an extensive audit of existing language, brands and visual approaches to ensure we clearly differentiated the NewCourse's approach in every aspect of our work.

THE PROCESS

Developing creative

Our research and workshops indicated linguistic and creative opportunities to explore and develop language and visual approaches. It was important to convey NewCourse's disruptive approach to quality improvement in the healthcare space. We translated their vision into a name, identity, clear proposition, mission statement and brand values.

THE PROCESS

Creating tools

Delivering value for money is our primary objective, especially with a startup. Some organisations need multiple and varied assets, some need very few, it all depends on their approach to new business, the mechanism for growing their business and what skills they have inhouse.
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WHAT’S IN A NAME?

A name precedes you, it sets the tone

A brand name can be a huge assets to a business. Whether starting an identity project from scratch or re-positioning an existing brand, strengthening the name, strapline, slogan or proposition is our number one objective. In an ideal world, it not only sums up what the company does but also conveys how it goes about its work. It provides people with a sense of what they can expect from their interaction.

NewCourse represents a fresh approach for quality improvement. Their methodologies appeal to clients wanting to move quickly whilst keeping a focus on lasting long-term outcomes.

NewCourse partners with organisations who are driven by a fundamental passion for high-standards. They offer the chance to pursue quality improvement using a partnership model with dedicated specialists.

NewCourse provides the opportunity to turn over a new leaf, set ambitious but supported pathways to lasting healthcare improvement.

IDEATION SKETCHES

Unique partnership and pathways

The idea we wanted to convey in the identity was the idea of partnership. A balanced coming-together of specialists to move in a new direction and achieve something together. It needed to form the beginning of a dynamic and symbiotic relationship.

THE LOGO

New Course

The result is a contemporary wordmark and strapline. It gives a strong sense of forward motion and an injection of clean fresh colours to emphasise the coming together of two elements. It uses geometric letterforms giving a sense of modernity and precision.

PRECISE DETAIL

Creating a logotype

Watch the logo refinement at hyperspeed

TYPOGRAPHY

Let’s keep this clean and simple.

NewCourse is dedicated to delivery rather than packaging. Our typography had to say the same thing. We were looking for something elegant with character but minimal and restrained. A statement that simplicity is always the goal.

Custom typography: what's the point?

A deeper meaning

When working with a logotype we are also looking for additional features we could accentuate, this might be in how the letters interact with each other, adjusting negative spaces to hide other symbols or icons, or perhaps creating greater alignment between letters to give a sense of precision, consistency or quality.

Custom typography: what's the point?

Aesthetics

Typefaces are designed by typographers to work as a set arranged in myriad sequences to cover all words. They are concerned with the overall impression a face creates. They are not fixating or optimising the ‘attractiveness’ of their letterforms for specific words. This will result in some words looking ‘better’ in a certain fonts than others. We select a typeface for a brand to give the right feel to communication materials, but when it comes to the name and logotype we normally want to make adjustments to optimise the aesthetic appearance of the name.

Custom typography: what's the point?

Unique

Sometime you might want to go further and make more pronounced adjustments to the letter forms to create something bespoke. For some organisations there is a value in designing something truly unique with a particular feel that no one else could simply type out and replicate.
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