Less is most definitely more

We're often asked questions like "what makes a good brand identity?" and "how do you know if you've designed a good logo?"

They're not easy questions because there is no single answer. But there is something that we always seek to bring to our work whether on or offline; brand identity or website; marketing campaign or piece of printed material - our work must always be clear and simple. It's much easier to over-complicate than to simplify; to use one thousand words rather than one hundred; to choose lots of images rather than finding a single, powerful image that sums up everything you want it to.

This approach is particularly hard when it comes to brand identity as any good identity should reflect the position of the company, its ethos, what it stands for and what it believes in. It is a big challenge to try and achieve all of that in a logo or a symbol, but we believe that if done well, simple brand ideas are timeless, versatile, memorable and more effective.

We took this approach when we refreshed our own brand and positioning last year. We interrogated our culture, the services we provide, the way we work and what we wanted to achieve as a team of creative people. Ultimately we kept coming back to one thing - the pride we take in the work we produce for our clients.

While thinking about all of this we came across a quote that summed up what we believe in:

A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.Antoine de Saint-Exupery, aviator and writer

We decided that to truly reflect our personality, our new brand identity had to be modest and quiet. From a functional point of view, it needed to act as a canvas to show off our clients, our work and our thinking. And so with this in mind we began to think about the new JUMP brand identity. We wanted to create a logo that almost wasn't there at all, a logo that had been stripped back to its most simplistic form.

After lots of experiments with paper cutting and creating type faces from shadows, we finally created a logo that makes the subtle, quiet, but confident statement that we wanted.

The unassuming design of our brand identity gives prominence to what is most important to us, our work.

After all, it's less about us, and more about our clients.