Client Case Study: Complete Material Handling

A full Rebrand and Website Design and development for Complete in the Material Handling Industry.

Branding and Website Design & Build

Although CMH had a burgeoning reputation in the North of England, its brand did not reflect the quality service it provided and was hindering its ambitions to grow. We were asked to maintain the name and colour palette, before exploring ways to lift everything into a much better space.

Naming

‘Complete Material Handling’ was too long and it was meaningless as CMH. After speaking to the client and understanding that ‘complete’ came from his all-round service and passion for going above and beyond, we decided it was only natural to make ‘complete’ the hero and the first impression for customers to focus on and remember.

As we explained, we weren’t throwing anything out, we were only readjusting the focus to the promise and the purpose of the brand. In the new option, Complete has so much more strength, minimising the industry tag, Material Handling, was simple but effective.

…it was only natural to make ‘Complete’ the hero

Design

With ‘complete’ taking centre stage and our knowledge that the company was much more than a forklift truck seller, we set out to create a brand mark that captured the full quality service.

As well as creating a word mark that captured Complete’s core values, we approached the design with two key symbols in mind; the infinity loop, for an indication of integrated services and a closed circle, representing the complete service loop.

Colour Palette

We removed the prevalent black as it didn’t fit with the fresher direction we were taking. Instead, a dark blue was chosen to complement the rest of the palette. We retained the prominent green and turned up the brightness to work with the white online and in print.

Brand look and feel

It can be difficult to find great shots of forklift trucks. What’s more, one truck often looks very different from another. For these reasons, we stripped back the imagery and created a halftone effect so it could be used on both the light white or bright green.

Website

After creating the new brand for Complete, we turned our attention to the website. We knew we had to create a bold look and feel so it stood out from a crowd of established competitors.

Defining

Besides clearly describing the range of services offered by the company, the site needed to offer all of the search and information based functionality of an e-commerce site without requiring the ability to complete a transaction.

That said, if someone did find a truck, then an enquiry needed to be clearly and simply doable from the products page. The client also had a non standard request for an inline CMS, so they could make changes to the pages while they were on them.

Content & Design

Each section of the site was mapped out prior to the design starting. With all of the content considered before creating the site’s structure, it meant we could design each page specifically to maximise the site’s messaging. The web design was bright and clean, in-keeping with the new look and feel.

Development

For the back-end development we used a Mongo DB and NODE for the product updates in the browser. The front-end uses standard HTML and CSS as well as some subtle uses of JS to add more motion and weight to the graphic user interface.

“Working with Layers’ was a truly insightful experience. We now have a brand that complements the quality services we provide our clients”
Kev Richardson / MD

Conclusion

We are proud of the work created for Complete, we love that they love their brand and are sure they’ll take complete ownership of taking it forward. Working with Complete was a great experience, thanks to Kev and the team for embracing the experience and really getting into the details of what Complete is all about. You can visit their site at www.completemh.co.uk.

If you have a brand challenge that you need looking at, or perhaps you want your company to make a great first digital impression — then get in touch with us at hello@layers.studio.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com on October 18, 2017.