How do you build a £3 billion brand from scratch?
Designhouse Creative Director Peter Dobie on authenticity, risk and the future of design.
Peter Dobie, Creative Director at Designhouse, faced exactly that question when the agency was appointed to name and brand Adura, the Shell and Equinor North Sea joint venture. The business secured a £3 billion credit facility, within months of launch. The brand had to be worth lending against before it had time to earn an operational track record.
“we’re very much about the relationship with the client”
Peter Dobie, Creative Director
Interviewed by Transform Magazine ahead of their recent awards, Peter’s answer begins with honesty as a structural requirement of the brief. The name, the identity, the entire positioning had to reflect the genuine character of the business. That authenticity is precisely what made it bankable.
In the interview Peter discusses the contrast with Cruxy, Designhouse’s other award-winning project at Transform Europe 2026.
Understand Objectives
Adura needed to slip into the market and feel established. Cruxy, a data-led growth consultancy, needed to earn attention in a sector with deeply established visual and verbal conventions. Playing it safe would have been invisible.
“you don’t always get asked to create a brand that stands out”
Peter Dobie, Creative Director
Designhouse built Cruxy’s entire brand around a single strategic idea: the Calculated Maverick. Taking considered risks, in a controlled way, to deliver a superior result.
Be Brave
Peter describes the point at which the team knew the work was right: they felt genuinely uncomfortable with how far they had pushed the ideas. That discomfort was the signal.
“just push the envelope, go as far as you can”
Peter Dobie, Creative Director
The client supported every element of it without hesitation, which for a creative director, Peter notes, is precisely the brief you want. The commercial outcome, 136% revenue growth in the first half of 2025 is what happens when a brand position is specific, committed to, and executed with discipline.
Those two projects sit at opposite ends of a spectrum that Designhouse navigates regularly. It requires a precise understanding of the competitive landscape, the audience, and the commercial objectives.
Human Centred AI
Peter is excited about what comes next. On AI, his position is direct: it is as significant a shift as the arrival of the Apple Mac. The anxiety the industry feels now is the same anxiety designers felt when digital tools arrived and proceeded to define the next era of the craft.
“in terms of design AI opens the door to a whole boat-load of new thinking”
Peter Dobie, Creative Director
The ideas have always been the irreducibly human part of the work. The intellectual rigour, the strategic positioning, the creative judgement, none of that is what changes. The tools that realise those ideas are simply becoming more powerful, and that opens the door to outcomes that were previously beyond the reach of smaller clients’ budgets. That, Peter argues, is straightforwardly good for the industry.
Watch the full interview with Peter Dobie
Designhouse collected six awards at the Transform Awards Europe 2026, including three Golds, for the Adura and Cruxy projects.
Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 55 years. We also work with start ups and scale ups to create brand identities that can grow with their business. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.
