Imagineear unveils a brand new look for 2021 and beyond
Imagineear is proud to reveal a new and refreshed brand identity to reflect the evolution and rapid growth the business has achived since the company was founded in 2009, and to expand the brand family to include Imagineear Health, a division of the company dedicated to healthcare apps and digital services.
In its very first iteration circa 2008, Imagineear was actually conceived as a retail brand, with the name coined to link an informative audio experience explicitly to a stimulated imagination, using two lower case e’s to create a unique, rather than a mere compound word. The little ‘i’ was a common trend after the success of Apple’s iMac, iPod, iPhone etc. used to denote a certain level of digital prowess, but in Imagineear’s case it also stood for ‘information’ – a double-entendre of sorts. With this, together with a ‘radio wave’ motif, signifying the dissemination of knowledge, the Imagineear brand and its promise was born.
In the years that followed Apple brought out a storm of disruptive consumer devices and launched the AppStore, which presented a head-on challenge to Imagineear’s original retail concept of selling pre-recorded audio for visitors to outdoor sites, loaded onto a re-usable device. A pivot was therefore required, and by early 2011 the company’s strategy walked back from the consumer space and on to safer and more familiar ground: B2B culture and visitor attractions.
As the company further established its competitive market position, supported by the strategic ‘ownership’ of the bold and striking colours of purple and lime green, the logo font and wave motif evolved with a cleaner, simpler look and message which supported a phase of continuous rapid growth from 2015 to 2020, working for cultural sites, sports stadia – and increasingly in healthcare.
More recently, it became clear there was room to further update and sharpen the brand. The opportunity arose during lockdown, one consequence of which was a determined shift to emphasise our now significant healthcare offer, turning a group of activities into a distinct ‘division’ within imagineear, with its own visual identity.
A brand survey of Imagineear staff and others revealed the need for a more mature, grown up look and feel without throwing the brand legacy out with the bathwater, and to build a variant for the emerging healthcare division. Imagineear’s in-house Design and Marketing team, led by Vasileios Karageorgos and Matt Vines respectively, both with extensive industry experience, took on the challenge of reimagining the future of the Imagineear brand.
The solution was an exercise in carefully calibrated restraint. The radio wave no longer adequately served the brand messaging as the company’s commercial offer was never genuinely defined by communication technologies alone, but the sentiment remained and the new design allowed it to morph into a distinctive ‘ping’, able to carry a subtle gradient of colour codes.
In order to move away from a simple rounded look, a new stylish font was introduced to harden up the text and reflect the challenges of the day. The colour palette was extended to include teal, yellow, and magenta options, further asserting the competitive edge of what has become widely known as ‘the Imagineear purple’, as always accompanied by a bolder green – a far cry from the muted green over a decade earlier.
The work was completed by capitalising the ‘I’ of Imagineear, signifying solid growth and a reaching of maturity, and now, armed with this capital ‘I’, Imagineear is ready to take on, and take our place in, the post-pandemic world.
As this year draws to a close, we’d like to say thank you to all our clients and partners, families and freelancers for helping Imagineear successfully navigate 2020, which has been a year like no other! Hoping 2021 brings our communities together again, we offer you our best wishes for the holidays.
For further information please contact:
Clare Cooper-Hammond
Imagineear Ltd
clarecooperhammond@imagineear.com
About Imagineear Ltd
Imagineear is a leading innovator in the provision of multimedia content and technology solutions. We design and produce multilingual content, which we often integrate with existing archive materials, as well as live audio. We publish to smartphones, and to smart devices on-site, working with sports venues, cultural sites and the healthcare sector. In London and Amsterdam we have experienced content, hardware, software and data solution teams. Our goal is to help our clients deliver exceptional value and memorable experiences to their visitors, both on- and off-site. www.imagineear.com