A3M Branding
- Branding
- Website design and implementation
- Brand social assets
- Merch design
- Packaging
- Signage and stationery
A3M are a Portsmouth-based company that have been creating bespoke visual solutions for print, merchandise, apparel and exhibition spaces for brands across the world since 1986. In anticipation of their 40-year anniversary they wanted to strengthen their brand ideology and develop a new identity that would successfully usher in a new era of A3M.
Working with the team we first undertook a workshop session to get a stronger sense of who they were and where they saw themselves moving forward. The workshop proved invaluable in offering a clear understanding of the brands strengths and opportunities, along with a deeper knowledge of where they wanted to position themselves within the market.
Through discussions to better understand the origin of the company name we found it lacked a clear rationale and therefore presented an opportunity to develop a definitive brand ethos that could be adopted moving forward, as well as a unique concept we could weave throughout the revised brand.
A3M evolved to represent “A 3 Mentality” – an attitude formed from their very DNA. This new ethos was built from the knowledge and expertise gained throughout their rich past. It flows in to their present, with how they apply focus and attention to detail within every project, and it’s how they plan for their future, with a constant investment in new technology and capabilities. ‘A 3 Mentality’ is what makes A3M different, it’s a way of life that can be used to approach every project and it’s what sets them apart from their competitors.
We embraced this new philosophy when developing the brands new look and feel. ‘3’ was the key influence that drove the design, leading to the contemporary logomark. The combined type utilises triangular forms while the three featured within the negative space – representative of a stitch – brings the whole brand together.
The theme was continued throughout every part of the brand. The art direction features custom brand patterns, which were produced by merging various palettes of three core paints, resulting in a unique set of visuals that mirror the nature of the organisation while also subtly reflecting their company’s newly adopted ideology.
The application of the brand embraces clean and confident layouts that allows the imagery and project work to take centre stage. The charcoal black hue from the brand palette offers a successfully contrasting base layer, which is used to compliment the new, modern direction of A3M, while the striking paint patterns inject energy, excitement and a little edge.
The completed brand resulted in a range of flexible application options that can now be put to work across all touchpoints from packaging, signage, social content, website design, merchandise, and stationary.
