I started Antoinette Oglethorpe Ltd. five years ago with a mission to help companies realise the leadership potential of their people.  Although our clients come from a range of industries and sectors, we specialise in developing leaders and leadership teams for high-tech organisations. I have recently launched my book Grow Your Geeks – A Handbook for Developing Leaders in High-Tech Organisations.

Every year since I set up the company we’ve been fortunate and grateful to experience continual growth in our business and client base. While Antoinette Oglethorpe Ltd. as a company has evolved, we’ve never taken the time to update the Antoinette Oglethorpe brand. We created our original logo at the start of the company’s journey when I was just a solopreneur with a modest budget. Now that we’re a team looking to the future we wanted a new brand that communicates who we are now and our ambitions.

Self-reflection

It soon became clear we needed more than an updated logo. We needed a completely new brand identity that could be applied consistently across everything we do. So, we teamed up with Innervisions ID to help us get it right.  We came across InnerVisions ID through the wonderful Key Person of Influence community that we are part of and their work with other members of the community has been an inspiration.

From the very first meeting, we knew InnerVisions ID were the right choice. Their founder, Sapna Pieroux, exuded creativity and confidence.  More importantly, we got the feeling that she “got” us and the value we provide our clients.  She carried out an invaluable assessment of our old brand that concluded that our collateral lacked consistency and strategy and needed to be more pulled together to represent the company (and its founder).

Sapna led us through some thought-provoking exercises.  This discovery process provided an opportunity for self-reflection, asking questions of who we are, who we help, how we’re different and what visual imagery and colours appealed

The new colour palette

As a company, we needed a colour palette that communicated our clients’ experience of our brand: vibrant and modern while feeling professional and trustworthy. Sapna developed a palette that fitted the bill perfectly.

The purple and blue are business, tech-industry-friendly colours and the greens relate to growth and development. The grey acts as a neutral, ‘grounding’ the other stronger shades.

The new logo

With a clear direction, Sapna developed a logo that provided an “evolution, not a revolution.” We agreed to keep the format of the logo the same.  We are fortunate that, while a long name, Antoinette Oglethorpe is wonderfully symmetrical.  Because it is so long, we regularly abbreviate the company name to AO so keeping the roundel in the middle helps with that and the strapline below allows us to describe what we do for clients since it is not apparent from the name of the company.

Thrilled with our new look, we wanted to start rolling it out.  So Sapna designed the business cards (with two reverses).

The new website

It was now time to turn our attention to our website. The old one did not tie in with the new look, but, since we had specifically designed it as a helpful resource for our clients, it contained a lot of helpful information that we didn’t want to lose.  We went through a lengthy and thorough process of simplifying the layout, content and navigation throughout. Our ‘jewel’ palette of colours was used throughout to segregate information (e.g. the bright green is always used where Grow Your Geeks is mentioned).  And then the design was handed over to the development team at Vercov to make it all functional.  Please have a look around and let us know what you think.

Going forward

For those that have been working with us and/or accessing our resources for many years, we want to remind you Antoinette Oglethorpe Ltd. is still me and the team. We will continue to deliver leadership development initiatives that are simple, intuitive and powerful. What you’ll see from here on is a more consistent brand experience.

As we turn this corner, we’re deeply thankful to all our clients who have made Antoinette Oglethorpe Ltd. possible. We look forward to bringing you further updates to our services in the future. We also want to say a big thank you to Sapna Pieroux at InnerVisions ID and Andre Marcos at Vercov for helping us shed the old and lift up the new.

p.s. If you’re an ambitious technology company wishing to develop your leaders and leadership team, please get in touch to schedule a 30-minute Informal Discovery call.  Let’s talk about how you can create a sustainable leadership culture in your organisation.