Wini Tse talks working collaboratively

Following the visual identity refresh work we've recently completed with Manchester studio MERO, Wini Tse, Code's co-founder and Creative Director, took part in a Q&A talking about the process. In particular, he focuses on how taking a collaborative approach was key to this project's success.  

Here's what he had to say about working with MERO.

Q. What was the problem you needed to solve?

A. As a business, we'd gone through a process of significant internal change; in July 2016, we commissioned some work to help us define Code's positioning, proposition & DNA. With this in place, we needed to create a visual identity to support our brand and culture.

Q. Why did you choose MERO?

A. We chose MERO for a number of reasons. I've known and worked with Andy for many years so I already knew he had the creative quality we were looking for.

Similarly, he knows us well and our expectations with regards to creative standards.  Another big reason was the 'type' of agency MERO is‚ a branding and digital studio; 'digital' being the important word here. Coming from a digital background, I felt Andy already knew the challenges of making a brand work across all digital channels.  

Trust is very important when you work with anybody, but obviously much more so when it comes to a branding project for your own agency. As one of the business' founding partners with 18 years experience of the Code brand, I'm pretty emotionally attached to our identity! But I totally trusted Andy and the team to help us create something that was right for us.

Q. How did they solve your problem?

A. They initially discovered as much as they could, working closely with key stakeholders and team members. They took the time to really get to know the whole organisation from the bottom up, which shows in their solution. Our core brief was to bring our tag line 'brilliant never stops' to life. I feel they've really done this in abundance.

They focused on the idea of an ongoing journey made up of many moving parts; to capture a sense of movement and motion with a strong rhythm and clear focus. Code's different disciplines were visualised in three striking shapes and these shapes were used to create eye-catching patterns.

Q. What did you particularly like about their approach or delivery?

A. They were really open to working collaboratively and iteratively which is really important to us here at Code.

Our tagline 'brilliant never stops' summarises that, as an agency, we never stop looking for ways to make the brilliant things we create even better‚ leaning, testing, improving; learning, testing, improving - and so on and so forth. We all adopted this as we moved through the design process and it really worked to not only make the process efficient but gave us the results we were all after.  Collaboration is key in our approach and MERO mirrored this by insisting that we were integrated into their project team and we made decisions together. MERO were also very good at giving and receiving feedback and never afraid to challenge ideas and executions if they felt they needed to be!

Q. How would you summarise the experience as a whole?

A. MERO have given us a strong identity that reflects the next stage in our evolution as a business. It's a creative solution - and now that we've put it into practice across our marketing and in-house collateral, we've discovered that it not only works really well, but also feels good and looks brilliant.  

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 You can read more about the process and see more versions of the Code branding in practice on MERO's blog.

About MERó

MERO are a branding and digital studio. With an impressive portfolio of clients for such a young enterprise, they've worked on everything from projects with award-winning fashion startups to the UK biggest children's science project to date with the BBC. Their studio is based in Ancoats, Manchester's growing creative hub. www.worksbymero.com