We build awesome brands, and we'd love to do the same for you.
Our goal in this proposal is to outline how we can create a cohesive framework that will:
elevate and manage the visual, verbal, and sonic elements of your brands
accurately capture the essence of your brand strategy and transform it into meaningful and enjoyable experiences for your audiences across all touchpoints
create instant recognisability and distinguish you from your competitors
and build traction and long-term loyalty both internally and externally.
We have a great track record of solving these types of complex business challenges for other regional brands - we'll touch on some of those later in the Case Studies section - and believe our particular combination of creativity and experience (with a bit of hard grafting) can help you too.
02.
About Us.
To briefly recap, we're an award-winning international multidisciplinary design studio working with local and global brands to help them realise their growth potential.
We do this through a focus on 3 core disciplines:
We drive your brand to become a catalyst for change, helping you supercharge your transformation efforts, and elevating your business performance.
Competencies
Research & Insights
Strategy
Architecture
Visual/Verbal/Sonic Identity
Design Systems
Environments
To help you realise your business and brand ambitions, you need the right culture for the journey ahead.
We use creativity and inspiration to help you shape your internal culture, energise your employees, and retain top talent.
This focus enables us to create robust, sustainable, long-term brand value - brands with a strong sense of purpose, communicated clearly and consistently to both internal and external stakeholders to build trust and loyalty, and through differentiation; creating distinctive and engaging brand experiences.
Our studio is our Design Prinicpal, Tony Naqvi, and Culture & Insights Lead, Selma Khurshid - so you'll always be talking with one of us directly - alongside a small and agile team spread across our 3 locations.
And where we need to expand our skillset, we bring in precisely the right talent and expertise to match the specific task, from a selective and trusted battle-tested pool of proven talent.
03.
Scope & Process.
Branding can often feel like a complex and stressful process for a business owner, as you embark on a journey of transformation where every decision can have far-reaching consequences.
But don't worry, it's not as daunting as it may at first appear, and we're here to guide you every step of the way. Thankfully we have tons of experience doing this, we're really nice people, and our approach is one we think you'll find comfortable, and probably quite enjoyable.
We start with ensuring we have a firm understanding of who you are and what it is you want to achieve, what key assets and deliverables you'd like us to develop, and a timescale for when you want it.
For this project, you already have a brand strategist on board that is helping you develop the foundations of your new brands, and you're now looking for a creative partner to bring the strategy to life with a powerful brand identity for both GTV and Paradox Studios.
Awesome - that's precisely what we excel at.
We'll take you through our process in a moment, but first let's confirm we've understood exactly what assets you're expecting us to develop:
Brand Identity Assets & Deliverables
The scope of this project includes developing the following direct and indirect brand identity assets and deliverables for GTV and Paradox Studios.
Indirect Assets & Deliverables
Design exploration Moodboards (x3)
Logo exploration
Colour exploration
Typographic exploration
Tone of Voice exploration
Imagery exploration
Direct Assets & Deliverables
Logo
Colour System
Typography
Tone of Voice
Imagery (photography, illustration, icons)
Design System
Styleguide
There will of course be some deviation from this list - it's not meant to be exhaustive, more illustrative of the mandatory elements - for instance we may or may not develop illustrations, or the styleguide may be shorter or longer than anticipated. As long as we all agree beforehand on any changes to the scope of work, we quite flexible and we have all bases covered.
Our process is perhaps more fluid and synchronous than others you may have encountered before - we tend to work across tasks concurrently rather than in a linear fashion.
This actually has some key benefits; it tends to speed up the timeline as we're not waiting for one task to finish before we begin another, decisions are reached much quicker as the process is more collaborative, inclusive and informative, which also means the results are more robust and superior.
To help you better understand how we work, lets go on a little journey together...
01
Discovery
We begin with a discovery phase, where we all get together and we get to know everything there is to know about your businesses, their people, goals, aspirations, audiences, competitors, environments, and influences.
Whilst you already have a Brand Strategist to help you with the deep thinking, we'll still be looking to join this part of the process as it's crucial we gain insights and understanding that will determine how the final brands will look and feel.
This phase of the project is where we begin to ideate, sketch, test, approve (and reject) concepts, and generally begin roughing out the framework of the creative platform.
The critical element here is evaluating and interpreting the brand strategy into a strong creative concept that can be tested and validated across applications.
03
Creative
The creative phase is the substantive part of the design process; here we'll be locking down our chosen directions, and begin crafting the visual and verbal narrative for each one.
This is also the more collaborative part of the process, where you'll be intimately involved in the design, testing, and validation of our design decisions.
By this point we have a chosen direction and are now refining the identity, and validating across brand applications.
We will also begin work on a toolkit; assets and guidance to help you and your agencies create branded content that accurately reflects and propagates your new visual and verbal identity.
05
Package & Implementation
The final stage is to create a package that includes all the mandatory assets and deliverables defined in the scope, and then help you implement the new identity.
We'll schedule a series of workshops with your internal teams (and your agencies) and take them through the new brand, what it means, and how it should be implemented across applications and touchpoints.
 
 
Tasks
Identity package
Sign-off
Brand workshops
As you can see the process isn't too overwhelming, and we'll work closely with you; discussing, advising, presenting, and deciding together how we create powerful and impactful brand identities.
And we are confident we can acheive this within a 6 week development schedule.
04.
Pricing.
Our pricing is based on our current understanding of the project and its deliverables, and may therefore be subject to change.
We've also excluded any ancillary costs and expenses, and would recommend you reserve a contincency fund of around 15% of the total budget, just in case.
Budget
Brand Identity Development
21,450
Project Costs
11,010
TOTAL (USD $) 32,460
Payment Gateways
Downpayment
50%
Discovery  
Exploration
25%
Refinement  
Package
25%
Our payment gateways are linked to the project schedule and deliverables due at the end of each phase.
This lets you to manage the budget and expenses throughout the duration of the project rather than as a large lump sum at the end.
Note: in addition to our commitment to deliverables, progress is dependent on prompt payment at each gateway (we explain more in our terms & conditions).
05.
Case Studies.
As we mentioned earlier, we've extensive experience building amazing brands, from start-ups and SMEs to large multinational corporations, across the EMEA region.
The following case studies showcase work we've done that we think is most relevant to you, with a focus on clients work in the Middle East.
We have extensive experience building successful brands in the Middle East
We partner with organisations to uncover and amplify their brand strategies
We take a collaborative, modular, and intuitive approach to our work
We can accomplish this project within a 6 week timeframe.
We have priced this project at $31,460, excluding expenses, and recommended a 15% additional contingency fund.
Our payment gateways link costs to performance and deliverables, and allow for more flexible budget management.
A telco that makes things easy?
Welcome to simplicity
MOBILY
Mobily wanted to reach increasingly diverse audiences, through a brand refresh of its product portfolio, that put emphasis on facilitating and approachable and accessible customer experience.
We joined the Brand Design & UX team at Mobily to help them bring unity and clarity through innovative service design and an 'always on' approach to customer experience.
The results were an unprecedented increase in year-on-year revenue (up over 56%), subscribers (up 84%), and significant reductions in CapEx and OpEx as we transformed and energised new and existing product and service brands.
Bringing harmony to a myriad of digital products, services and platforms
Our focus was on simplicity; stripping away superfluous elements, harmonising visual design, and introducing an entirely new approach to product and service development through lean/HCD design-thinking.
This enabled us to tap into data and insights from a wider social context that informed a design and UX cycle that resulted in simpler, richer, and more relevant and rewarding brand experiences.
Building intuitive and relevant brands
We developed a segmentation model that allowed us to precisely map product and service features to individual user needs, around which we could then carefully craft an appropriate brand and ux.
We then built a Brand Experience Framework - an expansive and robust toolkit for all design and development at Mobily - that made it easy for any product manger or content creators to build new product and service brands.
The first beneficiaries of this new framework were a new brand, product and UX design for Mobily's SVOD streaming service mView, POS and payment systems mPay, and fleet management product mFMS.
Designed different
Mobily's success is anchored in our approach of bringing the entire product and service design process in-house - a first for a telco and a key point of differentiation from their competitors.
We re-structured the Digital Services Department to create a dedicated product design group who could harness the power of the network, exploit an incredible volume of legacy and real-time data that provided unprecedented insights into consumer habits and behaviours, and partner with the Brand Design team to create compelling and purposeful offerings.
Challenging perceptions to reshape an industry
ADHLAL
Whilst Adhlal has a determined mission and vision for advocating design as a key contributor to the Saudi Arabian economy, it hasn't always been clear in articulating it.
Mixed messaging across communications, and a somewhat 'abstract' visual identity design often left people confused as to who Adhlal are, and more precisely, what they do. This led to them being dismissed as 'just another design agency' - a perception challenge they needed help to address.
We helped them reach a pre-eminent new position, with recognition, programs and partnerships, and community growth and participation in the first year post rebrand exceeding all previous years (since inception) combined.
Back to basics
Our first task was an audit of Adhlal's existing brand identity, something that founder Princess Nourah Al Faisal had been intimately involved the development of.
Our audit revealed several crucial pain points, most notably a weak and ineffective logo and visual design.
We addressed this by taking the brand back to basics and discovering what Adhlal exists to do, and then determined how we best communicate that out in the world.
Strong roots
We developed a brand strategy driven by the idea of shared and accessible knowledge, with Adhlal as a gatekeeper. Research and insights from the design community helped us formulate a new brand idea centred on the concept of "shared knowledge" as an empowering and motivating force for good.
And as a champion of Saudi cultural and heritage, we developed a look and feel for Adhlal that reconciled tradition with modernity - a timeless logo rooted in 6th century Kufic calligraphy, and a design system derived from the Saudi national emblem.
We created a bold and unique brand design to match Adhlal's ambition, one that is instantly recognisable and enables greater clarity and articulation of their messages.
Have fun going further than you ever thought possible
THE EDGE
As a new start-up challenged with creating recognition, The Edge needed a brand identity that would cut through the clutter, and cultivate interest in a community climbing sport that had something of a unwarranted reputation in Saudi Arabia
We helped them get a foothold with a brand strategy and visual identity that harnesses the power of transformation, and through the guidance and support of a growing climbing community helps nurture and develop both amateurs and professional.
Success of the new brand identity is such that The Edge has become the fastest growing climbing gym in the Kingdom, were able to expand their original business plan to include more locations, and signed a lucrative new partnership deal.
A journey of transformation
Doubtless like most people, we had assumed that safety would be of greatest importance to climbers, however it turned out not to be the case. Throughout our investigative phase, we kept coming back to an unusual but reoccurring theme amongst research participants – psychology, not safety, ranks highest.
It turns out that beyond the physical demands, climbing helps cultivate a mental resilience, through challenges that push the boundaries of your determination. Each ascent is a journey towards self-discovery and empowerment; as you conquer new routes, you conquer self-doubt and limitations.
And those mental changes stay with you, seeping into other aspects of your life - your work, domestic, and social life - you become more confident, robust, and courageous.
A bold ascent
With this unique insight, we created a dynamic, vibrant and flexible design system that adapts to different audience segments through a precise use of colour, typography, imagery and tone of voice.
A striking graphical device, inspired by climbing route maps, narrates the journey of transformation climbers experience as they progress from amateur to professional, and a blend of digital and physical product design helps bring together and unite this dedicated and passionate community.
