ABOUT

Overview/Brief/Challenges
PA Consulting (PA) unveiled its new Purpose in 2018, expressed by: "The power of ingenuity to build a positive human future" and our tag line: "Bringing Ingenuity to Life". PA's in-house Design Studio produced some great campaigns and individual pieces, however, our visual identity continued to be produced in an agile way – with designs often iterated in plain view as the need arose. Our brand design toolkit needed to work harder: we needed an identity system; one that could be applied consistently without losing the ingenuity that defines us as a firm.

As a business consultancy, PA is unique. Working across the world as a single united team, PA is the only company with the range of expertise to deliver end-to-end innovation. Our firm is comprised of thousands of experts, including scientists, engineers, and designers. In the last few years, PA has acquired multiple design firms, specialising in areas as diverse as product design, strategy, and human insights. As a small, internal design studio of 17 people, we had a very expert audience in addition to the leadership of the organisation, to whom we needed to impress very quickly to build credibility and trust – and make all feel engaged in the process.

The work began in January 2022 for a deadline set for early October 2022.

As an additional challenge, a programme to transform PA's website would proceed in parallel. The transformation was led by our internal digital marketing team in collaboration with Area17 (a brand and digital product agency in Paris and New York). The goal was to completely renew the website for relaunch in early October. This meant that our work on the identity needed to dovetail with the milestones of the website transformation. We needed to provide key elements of the system, such as Colour Palettes and Typography, at set points in the programme – and, ultimately, transform all touchpoints in time for the website's launch day.

Strategy/Process
To help us with a truly candid appraisal, in December 2021, an external agency specialising in brand identity and brand strategy was tasked to conduct interviews with PA people and some of our clients about our brand and visual identity. Combining this data with our own internal audit, we started a process of assessing strengths and weaknesses of our brand design.

Strategy:
1. We cut-out a core team of three from among our most experienced designers to focus on the project and backfilled the team with freelancers.
2. We agreed a brief, with clear goals for what success would look like:
Aspirational – reflect PA's design-centric credentials, including the highest levels of accessibility.
Authentic – true to purpose and values.
Differentiated – from competitors (from the broad range of big four consultancies, as well as strategy firms, IT players and design houses), as a challenger brand.
Influential – a challenger brand.
Valuable – deliver measurable success.
3. Given the multiple target deadlines necessary to keep the website transformation on track, our next step was to plan a series of design sprints, reviewing each element in our branding toolkit and identifying opportunities for development: Colour; Typography; Logo & brand line; Photography; Illustration; Motion; Complete the design system.
4. We set-up regular presentations and feedback sessions with key stakeholders from around the business. It was vital for the success of this project that stakeholders (some with competing interest) felt their input was gathered in a timely way, and not just as a tick-box exercise. And when we chose a different direction – we made sure to go back to them and explain why we had chosen a different route. We found that with this approach, even after some potentially awkward conversations, our stakeholders were generous – and actually grew in support of our work.
5. We built guidelines and templates as we went along.
6. As elements such as colour, typography, and logo were approved, they were briefed into the web development programme. This then grew to become a collaborative partnership, where learnings from one stream of work would feed into the other.
7. As the deadline approached, we initiated an implementation phase: garnering the support of the whole team and some external support to translate all the brand's touchpoints into the new identity.

Outcomes/Results
Extract from PA's Marketing launch communications:
"PA’s internal Design Studio created a new design system for PA. More confident, contemporary, meaningful, and human. The initial programme included:
• New colour palette, with a bold, contemporary ‘Ingenuity Red’. With a secondary palette which improves contrast, impact, and accessibility especially in digital environments.
• Modern, engineered typeface Aeonik, replacing Gotham used for brand and marketing. And a secondary font Orbikular, warm and human, expressing our culture and personality.
• Simpler, clearer, more confident version of our logo. Refining the silhouette that is so recognisable versus our competition.
• The logo has a stronger letter mark with a greater sense of substance and trust. The dots that represent ‘moments of ingenuity’ are now balanced by the calm, simple precision of the letter mark.
• Together, these elements form a new Design System for the brand, and a strong foundation we’ll build on."

Feedback from key internal stakeholders, including Design Partners from newly acquired firms:

"PA's new identity and website are more than a refresh of the brand – they represent a pivotal milestone in PA's legacy – a steppingstone in the journey of what PA is set to become. Today, PA is not known for design. Despite having incredible, world-class teams creating magnificent new experiences for our clients, design is not what people associate with PA – yet. This new identity is the point toward defining a new era of what design can achieve."

“I was genuinely thrilled by what the team showed me. I think they have found a very creative way to capture the essence of PA and provided a platform that we can all feel proud of. I am very excited by the opportunity this will provide to inspire our PA team and attract brilliant people to join us. I hope the team feel very proud of what they have achieved.”

"Our website has a material impact on our business growth – from initial client and employee contact or engagement, to establishing credibility and trust – and the overall brand perception of PA in a highly competitive market. I am blown away by the work the team has done. It is clear, bold, and differentiated, it represents the sum of PA, it screams design and is something that I our entire workforce is proud of. I truly believe it will go one step further in helping us to secure our segment of one market position."