Sectors: Brand

How Coutts Turns a Rooftop Garden into a Brand Statement

Posted on by Matthew Gillman

Coutts is a 330-year-old private bank. Its brand rests on discretion, quality and a relationship with wealth that goes beyond the transactional. Establishing a garden above its Strand headquarters, growing saffron, wasabi and Chilean guava for its own restaurant is more than simple horticulture.

Designhouse CEO Lavinia Culverhouse recently visited the Skyline Garden for a private tour, and it is hard to miss what Coutts is doing here. The garden yields fresh produce directly for the bank’s hospitality offering. It also hosts client events and workshops. And it sits, quite literally, above one of London’s most recognisable financial addresses. Every choice, from the global varieties grown to the sustainability credentials, reinforces the brand. Coutts wants its clients to feel  the values of the institution. Considered. Unhurried. Rooted in something real.

For those of us working in strategic brand design, it is a useful reminder that the most compelling brand expressions are rarely the ones that announce themselves loudest. A rooftop garden is not a logo or a campaign. But it communicates values, provenance and a particular idea of excellence in a way that a tagline rarely can.

The brands that endure tend to be the ones that find ways to make their values tangible, experiential and consistent across every touchpoint, including the ones nobody would think to call branding at all.

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

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Flowers Exhibition Saatchi Gallery

Posted on by Matthew Gillman

Finding Inspiration In Nature

Last week, the Designhouse team took a break from the studio. We were celebrating CEO Lavinia Culverhouse’s birthday with a visit to the Flowers exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square.

With over 500 works spanning everything from botanical roots to the intersection of flowers and fashion, it was a rich and genuinely surprising day.

      

It is easy to underestimate how much time away from a screen can sharpen your thinking. Exhibitions like this one are a reminder that the strongest visual language often comes from nature. Form, shapes, colour – all  things that nature designed long before brands existed. For those of us working in strategic brand design, that kind of reference point matters.

   

The best brand work does not emerge from a brief alone. It comes from people who are curious, who look broadly, and who bring a wider frame of reference to the table. Days like this are part of how Designhouse stays sharp.

Happy birthday, Lavinia, you deserve all the flowers.

It was a bloomin’ marvellous day!

 

 

 

 

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us

What the Fashion Runway Can Teach Us About Brand Identity

Posted on by Matthew Gillman

The Designhouse team visited the Lightroom in King’s Cross recently for Vogue: Inventing the Runway. It’s an immersive exhibition tracing the fashion show from the intimate couture salons of the early 20th century to the era-defining spectacles of recent decades. Narrated by Cate Blanchett, it is a genuinely compelling piece of experiential storytelling. With incredible Vogue archive featuring designers from Chanel and Dior to Vivienne Westwood and Maison Margiela,

Fashion Show as Brand Statement

 

What struck us was how clearly the exhibition frames the runway as a communications medium. It’s not just a vehicle for clothes. The show is where a designer’s identity is made legible. It’s where values, references and audience are declared season after season. In that sense, it is not so different from the work we do. Designers of all disciplines struggle with the question of how to make tangible something that is abstract. The challenge is to embody  a vision, a set of values, a sense of who you are and who you are for, to make it visible and felt by an audience.

Authenticity is Always In style

 

The figure who stayed with the team longest was Patrick Kelly.

Born in Mississippi in 1954, Kelly became the first American admitted to the Chambre Syndicale du Prêt-à-Porter, the governing body of the French ready-to-wear industry.

His runway shows looked genuinely fun. Models sashaying and twirling, turning the catwalk into a party. The majority of his models were Black at a time when that was far from the norm.

His signature playful buttons were a direct reference to his grandmother, who mended his family’s clothing with mismatched buttons from her sewing basket. That detail matters: a brand rooted so specifically in personal history, translated into a visual language that was immediately recognisable, joyful and subversive all at once.

Kelly was extremely proud of his roots and culture. He actively incorporated his own background into his practice. And he merged the celebration of Black identity with a contemporary aesthetic. He built a brand with genuine conviction behind it. One that communicated something real rather than simply competing for attention. It is a lesson that transfers well beyond fashion.

 

 

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us

M6N – A Brand Under Pressure

Posted on by Matthew Gillman

The first weekend of the Six Nations delivered everything it usually promises. Kit design upgrades were in evidence across all the teams. France were imperious in Paris, Ireland edged a tight one in Dublin, and Scotland held off a determined Italy. But alongside the on-the-pitch kit and caboodle, there was a parallel conversation running, one that those of us in brand design found equally compelling.

Rebrand Reactions

The tournament rebranded to M6N ahead of its 25th anniversary in 2025. The new identity was developed by London creative agency How Now. It centres on a slanted, shiny wordmark rendered in a fiery orange gradient, chosen to channel warmth and optimism. The reaction, predictably, was split.

Fans compared it to everything from Mars bar branding to the credits of a 1996 comedy film. Others called it a necessary evolution. That kind of response is familiar to anyone who has worked through a major rebrand with a client. The logo lands first, stripped of context, and people react to a mark rather than a system.

 

 

Standing Strong In the Face of Criticism

Michael Ritson, Head of Marketing & Creative at Six Nations Rugby was clear on the intent. It is designed to create memory structures with the brand, attract younger fans, and build something that works as a digital-first identity. The men’s rebrand also aligns with the Women’s Six Nations identity launched in 2023. There is now a unified, intuitive naming structure across M6N, W6N and U6N. As a result, each stands on its own, while also remaining part of the same family.

Ritson’s response to the initial backlash was straightforward: trust the strategy, and see how it comes to life when the games kick off. That is sound thinking. A brand identity is not a logo on a white background. It is colour filling a stadium, players wearing it, broadcasters running it across millions of screens, supporters wrapping themselves in their nation’s colours. Seen in that context, across that first weekend, it worked. Brilliantly.

The Final Result

The M6N rebrand is a useful case study in one of the most consistent truths in brand design. Reaction at launch is rarely the measure of success. The measure is whether the identity holds, scales and builds meaning over time.

And this is most definitely a brand identity that earned its conversion.

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us

Reboot’s bold new brand identity

Posted on by Matthew Gillman

Designhouse worked with Reboot, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to driving racial equality in the financial services sector. We created a vibrant new brand identity. The project was on a pro-bono basis, reflecting our commitment to using creative expertise in support of meaningful social change.

Background

 

Reboot’s mission is to educate business leaders in financial services; to provide a platform to build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. It does this by raising visibility of the challenges faced by ethnic minority professionals. Predominantly using the power of storytelling to bring individual experiences into the mainstream conversation.

Central to Reboot’s approach is its ambassador network. Support comes from senior figures from some of the most prominent names in the industry, including State Street, Numis, BlueBay Asset Management, Invesco, GIC and MFS Investment Management. These voices lend credibility and reach to Reboot’s campaigning, engaging business leaders who have the power to drive meaningful change.

Alongside this advocacy work, Reboot produces research to underpin its messaging. Its flagship annual Race to Equality report tracks and highlights trends around discrimination in the UK workplace. It offers data-driven insight that sits alongside the personal stories at the heart of the organisation’s identity. By combining lived experience with robust evidence, Reboot is able to push for progressive change in a way that resonates both emotionally and professionally.

Attention-grabbing  Identity

 

 

The new visual identity created by Designhouse reflects the energy and ambition Reboot’s mission.

The brand mark symbolises positive change. Bold, punchy design choices capture attention and motivate action. At the centre of the identity is a clear call to action: “It’s time to switch the narrative”. This strapline  encapsulates Reboot’s determination to reshape the conversation around race and opportunity in financial services.

For Designhouse, the strategic thinking behind the identity is as important as the visual execution. The aim is to resonate with business leaders, encouraging active involvement rather than passive observation. Every element of the design is considered in terms of how it will inspire engagement; from the colour palette to the typography and overall tone of the brand.

The partnership is a strong example of how design and brand strategy can serve a purpose beyond commerce. The right brand identity adds weight and credibility to organisations working on issues that matter. For Reboot, a compelling and professional identity helps ensure that its message is heard at the right levels. It givesthe organisation the visual authority to sit alongside the major institutions it seeks to influence.

Designhouse continues to work with clients across sectors where brand strategy and design thinking can make a genuine difference.

 

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us