Project

Michael J. Lonsdale Brand Identity

Project

Michael J. Lonsdale Brand Identity

Client

Michael J. Lonsdale (MJL)

Industry

Construction

Services

Bringing buildings to life.

Services

Michael J. Lonsdale (MJL) is a construction company who specialise in providing multi-disciplined building and engineering services for large scale commercial properties.

Since the company’s inception, they have grown exponentially. The original brand identity had become strained and dated, and desperately needed revitalising to reflect the company’s growth and development, as well as providing a greater sense of brand pride and unity across the business.

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The Heartbeat

Creating the right environment

In wanting to portray a strong consumer facing strapline and brand message, a fresh perspective to MJL’s purpose was needed. We wanted to capture the commitment to their clients and the strong values that they held dear.

MJL needed a more emotive perspective on construction that would drive their brand belief. The essence of this brand belief was directed at the end users of MJL’s buildings. It was these people who were benefiting from the great work, and therefore so would MJL’s clients.

MJL are passionate about creating the best environments for people, regardless of their use. Environments that promote positiveness in greater productivity, ideation, communication, focussed efficiency and even improving relationships. We wanted to harness purpose (‘bringing buildings to life’) as much as possible when we created their new brand positioning, to give more emphasis to a meaningful strapline:

“The environment in which we live, spend time or work is of great importance to our way and quality of life. As one of the UK’s leading multi-discipline building and engineering services providers, it is our job to bring buildings to life by making sure we create the right environments, where people are comfortable, safe and happy so that they can enjoy life and thrive.”

Through investigation, we found that ‘creating the right environment’, a slight tweak on the original strapline, still strongly resonated throughout the company and its audience. But now, driven by purpose, it has been given a much greater meaning.

Life-force

Life-force was the name given to the origination of the new MJL visual identity. It was born out of the new brand purpose of ‘bringing buildings to life’. The source of ‘life-force’ in all life is the heart. Arteries and veins are blood vessels responsible for systematically carrying oxygen-rich blood to and from the heart. It was this contrast, partnership and balance that inspired the new MJL logo mark.

The logo

The original MJL red is retained to represent strength, energy, passion, and power, contrasted and balanced with the new brand blue, representing calm, stability, harmony, unity and trust. The colour contrast is representative of the life-force of the brand (arteries and veins – input and output).

The MJL initials are specifically crafted from precise geometric shapes, perfect manipulated to portray the letterforms.

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Service iconography

The service iconography was designed to be more immersive than standard iconography sets. They needed to be more active and portray a deeper insight into what MJL could deliver through their various services.

To align them with the brand purpose, simple display animations were created, bringing each one to life.

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The Results

Following the success and launch of the new MJL brand, the business has gone from strength to strength, expanding the company into several new divisions that help to provide conviction in the brand’s newly found purpose and strengthen the offering to current and perspective clients.

Redworx, a subsidiary of MJL, was the first division to undergo a brand update. Then, recently founded Lonsdale Rail and recently acquired E7 Building Services. Each underwent a brand evolution that followed the same footprint laid out by the original MJL work.

To help facilitate all this expansion the Michael Lonsdale Group was born. This was to become the overarching parent company which would neatly house all of the newly branded divisions. A testament to how a the power of a successful rebrand can assist and even accelerate a business’s objectives and successes.

The group logo is based on the ‘M’ of Michael Lonsdale and like all of the division logos that sit under it, is constructed geometrically; wide at the base implying strength and crafted points at the top to provide balance. It uses all three primary colours from the divisions’ logos and will become a mark of quality, innovation and reassurance among the UK’s building and engineering services.

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Website

The original MJL website was hugely out of date and needed updating. The newly formed Michael Lonsdale Group’s main digital hub is a website that brings to life the brand’s new position and clearly sets out the new divisions and services of the company’s specialist divisions.