High Court Enforcement Group brand identity

The (family of) logos

Initially, the client brief was to create a strong visual identity that would work with their existing logo, create strong brand recognition and raise the profile of the brand, however, as the project developed it was clear that the tired logo required a rethink. It was dated and did not possess many qualities that reflected the organisation’s personality.

In addition, HCE Group is the parent company for Excel Civil Enforcement and National Eviction team and, as the project progressed, it became clear a new suite of logos was needed for all three companies.

The underlying concept for the identity was the idea of conveying strength and robustness, whilst avoiding all the natural visual clichés that proliferate the enforcement sector.

As leaders in their sector it was important that the brand had gravitas and made everyone pay attention.

We used geometric shapes to convey the idea of strength — a star for HCE Group, a pentagon for Excel Civil Enforcement and a hexagon for National Eviction Team.

We also had to tackle the difficulties of designing a logo with a very long company name in the High Court Enforcement Group. When written on a single line, it create a very long form that does not scale down well. At smaller sizes as it looses its legibility. We stacked the typographic component of the logo to create a more square form and, for balance, applied the same treatment to all three logos.

A visual hook

Inspired by the work of the artist Bridget Riley who used colour and shapes to portray energy and movement, we conceived a series of illustrations to bring life to the brand identity.

Undoubtedly, these glorious patterns demand attention and work seamlessly with the geometric shapes used on the logo. Begone monotone blue and in with vibrant colours that are underpinned by the original blue of the original identity.

With the logo, typeface, colour and brand theme sorted we catalogued this in a set of comprehensive brand guidelines and got to work applying this to various items of marketing collateral.