Retail Reimagined Story

Discover

Retail expert seeks design solutions

Formerly at Jaeger and Burberry, Cathy McCabe runs a startup retail consultancy. She talks to us about how she came to work with Right Angle. “I had worked with Tony some years ago. I know and value the importance of a digital brand and when I made the decision to start Retail Reimagined, I immediately thought of Right Angle. I wanted the design to be something that resonated with retailers and I wanted to ensure that it had the right professional feel from the offset”.

Design

Getting started with the design

When a client comes to Right Angle there’s an initial discussion about the goals of the brand and its values. If there are any particular styles, colours or preferences to take into consideration and indeed any that are off-limits. What’s key is that it’s a collaborative consultation. In this case Cathy wanted the brand to be able to evolve and have room to grow. Taking key information from the meeting, the first sketches and drafts were developed.

Eliminating what doesn’t work

At this point in a brand design often, there will be checks that something pertinent isn’t being missed – in this case, bar-codes, shopping trollies and shopping bags were dismissed as potential visual elements in favour of tags – as the tag represents fashion as well as retail (Cathy’s main area of expertise). Early process work included lots of variations around tags, stars, scripts and ‘RR’ monograms.

Meeting the client’s brief

“When I saw the designs it was what I wanted without me even knowing. Quirky and funky but not *too* funky. The retailers I’ll be working with need a clear vision of what the brand is about but vitally it also needs to look and feel contemporary and professional, and convey the services offered.”

“What you get with Right Angle and Tony, in particular, is that he is very thorough and particular – there’s real attention to detail. As happens at the beginning of any venture, it’s been a bit manic but it’s been like having extra hands on board. It really feels like I have my *own* creative team.”

She continues, “They “get” what I’m trying to do and what I’m trying to convey. It really feels like a partnership. I don’t feel like I have to explain things to the nth degree and they’ve been able to deliver a number of creative solutions to urgent requests. It’s so handy to be able to have that confidence and it makes things really flexible too.”

Deliver

The solution

Following a variety of interpretations, the team came up with the combination of a price tag and a star representing both retail and imagination. The negative space of the hole in the tag forms the dot on the ‘i’ of ‘reimagined’ integrating both text and icon seamlessly.

Here’s the final brand where the combination of design elements, allows for great versatility. The logo works in both landscape and portrait formats, the tag can work on its own as a square icon, the 5 tag symbol represents the various services offered by Cathy’s company and individual coloured stars can be used as bullet points and background images on the website and stationery etc.

Here we can see that a consultancy based business who has prior experience of working with design professionals knows that investing in good design is a worthwhile commitment and allows great scope for marketing in a crucial growth period.

So, if you’re looking for design advice, no matter where you are in your business journey, we can help. Get in touch.

If you would like to see the full Retail Reimagined design presentation, just let us know.