Anna 
Just under a year ago, we embarked on a brand audit to identify what aspects of our brand we wanted to keep, change or remove. We reached out to some long-standing clients to get their perspective, as well as conducting internal surveys and workshops with our team.
The results? We identified that our brand was not up to date with where our team was, or where our company needed to go. If you know us, you probably know us because of our explainer videos. They’re great, and we wanted to expand on our expert-ness there and move into new territories – immersive content, like AR, VR, 360° video and personalised video.
To help, we also wanted to make our overall look and feel match who we are on the inside.
Where it all began: workshops and surveys
While they don’t sound particularly fun, workshops and surveys formed the basis of our brand refresh. Hannah designed a series of activities and discussions where the team was able to share their feedback and aspirations for Creativa’s visual, verbal and core brand identities.
Our brand refresh team also reached out to our longstanding clients, to ask them the same questions we asked the team. What do you like? What is confusing? What makes sense? What’s your feedback on our current branding?
The feedback we received from both the team and our clients showed us that we had improvements to make, and gaps in our brand identity that needed articulating.
Even while they were clearly evident in the way we worked with each other, and our clients, vital pieces of ‘who we are’, like our values, our vision statement, and our company mission were not put down on paper.
Based on our brand personality we wanted our design to be creative, fun and human. Our hope is that the look and feel you see on the website and in our new branding is bold, playful, creative and avant-garde.
The next step: stylescapes
After all our brand research the first step the design team took was to create stylescapes. Stylescapes are like moodboards, but taken to the next level. They are a collection of assets, fonts and design elements to give you an overall aesthetic of the brand.
This stage is for evoking emotions in your audience, as none of the designs will be in your final product – they’re more representative of a mood you want to create.
Sarah and Monica developed and pitched 4 to 6 different stylescapes to our team, to then pick our final choice. The chosen look is bold and creative. It has a lot of flexibility in its art style to be whatever you want it to be. These points are what we took from this step to then develop our own personal look.
Onto development
Through the development stage we were very interested in exploring bright colours, bold shapes, various mediums and typography.
In developing our style, we felt the logo wasn’t quite right. The curves on the lettering didn’t fit with the other bold designs. After some development, we created a wave in the logo inspired by a wave in one of our developmental mock ups. This instantly felt more like us and fit into the branding we were developing. The wave represented our creativity, and from this made us want to bring the creativa wave into more elements of the design.
In the development of the brand guidelines we created numerous assets for the brand such as business cards, social posts, slide decks, t-shirts and banners. We look forward to changing up the design of these elements to always be fresh and fun.
Website design
In the creation of the website design, we knew we wanted it to be easy to use, interactive and fun. A website that shows off our creative flair while also is easy to navigate.
We started off with the homepage design. In choosing an interactive scroll design, that was the starting off point for developing a unique home page. We hope our viewers enjoy the small flairs of creativity and fun in the website, things you may not see on your first viewing, such as the wave in the logo when you hover over it.
Another important aspect of the website design was the ‘View our work’ gallery. We needed a hub for us and our clients to use and find our past work with a click of a mouse. We created a filter categories bar to allow you to pick from our numerous clients e.g. Superannuation, promotional etc.
We want to do a big shoutout to the web design company we partnered with for this site, SGD. A particular thank you to James, Ismay and their dev team, who worked tirelessly with us to develop the wireframes and designs into a real life, working website. And, we couldn’t have gotten it up and running without our inhouse developer and newly appointed Head of Emerging Technologies, Russel Del Rosario. Thank you to all of those who used their technical skills and gave us great feedback and input at every stage!
Final touches
Ultimately our new look reflects us and who we are as a team and the clients we work with. We also hope that this new look will help us stand out to a whole new set of clients.
Today, Creativa’s brand reflects who we are: a creative content and technology studio, bringing your brand and audience closer together through video production.
Our brand reflects our values: being people-first, staying down to earth, doing the right thing, and committing to learning.
We do what we do because we believe in the power of content, and how it brings people together to create meaningful connections.
Now, with that out of the way, let’s get to work. Lights, camera, action!
Check out the video we made for this announcement on Instagram.
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Thanking our brand refresh team
We could not have gotten to the point we are without this passionate, intelligent group of people. Meet the passionate working group that formed the driving force behind the brand refresh.
Steve Bristow
Creative Director and Business Development at Creativa. He led the charge of updating our visual identity, along with Design Lead, Sarah Schwab. Having been with Creativa longer than any of us, his insight and perspective was vital to making sure we grew and evolved our branding with our team and aspirations.
Sarah Schwab
Our Design Lead, who brainstormed and mapped out the different ways we can approach the updating of our visual identity, along with our Lead Animator, Monica Ip. Sarah’ser creative and flawless intuition of what our visual direction could be was integral to the whole project.
David Tipton
Our Marketing Manager, David, supported the brand refresh from the very beginning, empowering the brand refresh team to review, reflect and make changes to our brand identity. He helped us take the necessary steps towards a Creativa we are excited about and proud of.
Mariana Ruiz
Mariana, our People and Culture Lead, was an incredible advocate for internal company culture and the shaping of our mission, vision and values. Without her, we would be missing a large chunk of the soul that was breathed into our new brand identity.
Hannah Vorlicek
Our Content and Brand Coordinator, Hannah, headed up the project management of our brand refresh. She delegated and encouraged people to step into creating and articulating this new visual and core identity for Creativa.
Gina Hanrahan
Gina stepped in seamlessly halfway through the process to support and provide input on behalf of the producers. She dedicated time and effort to increasing positivity and encouraging innovation within our meetings and workshops.
Our other notable mentions:
David Heinrich
Dave was our Executive Producer for three years, and was with Creativa almost eight years altogether. He was a crucial part of bringing the client’s perspective to our discussions, and was very much missed when he moved into a new position. His work is evident across the direction of our new branding – thank you, Dave.
Alicia Hepworth
Our previous Head of Production, Alicia, helped us reshape Creativa with her passionate contributions and heart for meaningful content. She stood for all of our new values, and we are so lucky to have benefitted from the care she poured into this project, and as a result, into the people who work here – long into the future.
Monica Ip
Our Lead Animator Monica worked tirelessly with Sarah and Steve to make our animated assets, digital collateral and online platforms have a consistent, refreshed look and feel that felt fun, human and creative.
Ted Janet
Our in-house Creative Writer, Ted, also known as the ‘Teditor’, took on the review and editing of all of our new collateral that came out as part of this brand refresh. From the creation of the brand guidelines, to the resultant sales collateral, he was intentional with every word on the page. Making sure our voice felt human, that it felt like ‘us’. His care is evident in every sentence you read (but not this paragraph – we wrote this one! 😉).
