The Design Council’s Designing Demand programme put Johnson Matthey Colour Technologies through an intensive Immersion Day with a team of designers and business experts. They looked at all aspects of the business, from its strategy to its branding and culture and highlighted how the use of design could improve performance.
‘We didn’t know what to expect from the programme but we calculated that it couldn’t do any harm,’ says the company's Technology Manager, Howard Winbow. His colleague, Product Manager Paul Cartlidge, says he was initially sceptical about the programme: ‘I couldn’t see how it could be relevant to us, as we didn’t design products such as plates but we soon discovered that design is actually about people, culture and brands as well as products.’
The immersion team identified 20 areas for the business to consider and Johnson Matthey Colour Technologies decided that strong branding was an important strategy, requiring a strong visual identity that delivered a clear and consistent message.
As Cartlidge explains: ‘Johnson Matthey Colour Technologies was a name but it wasn’t a brand. We’d lost our way in terms of the rigour of our branding and through Designing Demand we came to the conclusion that we needed help with this project.’
Having decided that it needed a new visual identity, Johnson Matthey Colour Technologies had to choose a way forward. Design Associate Evan Kitsell, who had led the Immersion Day, worked with the management team to define the rebranding project and draw up a design brief. ‘We had only worked in a very limited way with designers,’ says Cartlidge. Kitsell gave advice on how to put together a shortlist and what to look for in a design consultancy.
‘Evan brought a different way of approaching designers. We knew that if we went to the agency we’d worked with before we would get more of the same and we needed something different,’ explains Cartlidge.
‘There are a lot of agencies out there. From our experience they’re bad at selling themselves, so it’s hard to gauge whether they’re suitable. Evan gave us a process for evaluating them and we invited five to present based on our outline brief,’ he says. So the company chose The Chase, a national branding and graphics agency, which has an office in Manchester to work on its brand.
