Category: Awards

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”

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”

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”

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”

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.

Contact us

Last night, at the Transform Awards Europe 2026, Designhouse took home six awards across two projects. A result that places us among the most decorated independent brand design agencies in Europe.

The awards cover 53 categories. With entries across the full spectrum of the industry, from major international networks to boutique studios. Three Gold awards, two Silver awards and one Bronze, makes us one of only ten agencies this year to achieve multiple Golds.

Creative Excellence

The awards recognise excellence across the full breadth of brand development. Including naming strategy and creative direction through to visual identity and brand evolution. To win across so many disciplines in a single evening reflects the strategic rigour that underpins everything we do.

Our work with data-led growth consultancy Cruxy was the standout story of the evening. We bagged four awards: Gold for Best Brand Evolution (Business), Gold for Best Visual Identity in the Professional Services sector, Silver for Best Visual Identity in the Financial Services sector, and Silver for Best Creative Strategy.

Adura, the Shell and Equinor  joint venture, won Gold for Best Naming Strategy (New Name) and Bronze for Best Visual Identity.

Getting to the Cruxy Gold

We worked closely with the Cruxy leadership team through a series of collaborative workshops to understand the firm’s genuine competitive differentiation. From those conversations, we identified a brand personality we named the “Calculated Maverick”. A balance of  intellectual precision combined with a daring, challenging energy. That single insight shaped every subsequent decision, from the visual identity to the tone of voice.

“an outstanding brand evolution that shifted the business with great results”

 

The judges were unambiguous in their assessment. On the Gold for Best Brand Evolution, the panel noted it was “an outstanding brand evolution that shifted the business with great results”.

On the Gold for Best Visual Identity, judges described it as “a strong rebrand that brings a unique brand personality to the sector”. The Silver for Best Visual Identity in Financial Services recognised “a design solution that succeeds with an identity that demands attention”.

“a design solution that succeeds with an identity that demands attention”

 

Additionally, the Silver for Best Creative Strategy acknowledged the work’s strategic foundation. Judges noted  the Calculated Maverick strategy, “expressed through bold geometry, a confident colour system and a voice that is incisive yet approachable, reimagined Cruxy as a consultancy that does not just advise, but also accelerates.”

“bold geometry, a confident colour system and a voice that is incisive yet approachable”

The commercial results speak for themselves. In the first half of 2025, Cruxy achieved a 136% increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2024. They went on to secure  over $250 billion in additional Assets Under Management.

These are not vanity metrics. This is strong brand strategy, designed coherently, to create commercial momentum that compounds over time.

You can read more about the Cruxy project here

Explore our thinking on brand strategy and ROI in our related piece here.

Building A New North Sea Brand, Adura

The Adura brief was a really demanding naming challenge. A JV between international energy companies, Shell and Equinor, needs a name that accomplishes several seemingly contradictory things at once. It has to establish immediate credibility as a major operator without any operational track record. A the same time it has to differentiate itself  from two parent companies whose combined heritage spans more than a century. And it has to resonate authentically with the broadest number of stakeholders. This includes the local Aberdonian community, government regulators, 1,300 transferring employees, and commercial partners in billion-pound negotiations.

“highly rigorous work that gives Adura a credible foundation”

 

Designhouse developed a rigorous naming methodology built around five criteria: authority, independence, regional connection, durability and flexibility.

The result “Adura” fuses Aberdeen with durability, embedding both geographical heritage and brand promise. A name that is a single, distinctive word that sits outside all the conventional naming conventions of the sector. Crucially, the phonetics were deliberate. Spoken with a Scottish accent, the hard D softens to produce a sound that carries regional warmth. At the same time, the visual identity system, with its granite-dense custom logotype and trapezium symmetry, reinforces the name’s qualities of permanence and structural integrity.

“super-strong concept with execution to match”

 

The judges responded with considerable enthusiasm. On the Gold for Best Naming Strategy, the panel described it as a “super-strong concept with execution to match”. They noted the brand name is “memorable and ownable, with great results.” The Bronze for Best Visual Identity acknowledged “highly rigorous work that gives Adura a credible foundation”.

“memorable and ownable, with great results”

 

You can read more about the Adura project here

Visit the Adura brand at adura.com

Celebrating with Clients

This is how great brand design actually works. Close, sustained collaboration between creative teams and client leadership. Relationships built on mutual trust and a shared commitment to ambitious outcomes.

For 55 years, that has been the Designhouse way. Last night was a fine reminder of why it matters.

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 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.

Contact us