When we initially started this project, we set out to create a brand — essentially a label producing products. The idea was pretty straightforward…
We want to produce limited edition pieces, promoting the idea of progressive collaboration, creating new and exciting products, never repeating ourselves, always moving forwards.
One thing we were worried about from the beginning is how easy it is to fall into the “oh well this is just another clothing brand” category and get chucked into the bandwagon bin, so we chatted endlessly about how we can avoid this. Truth is — there isn’t actually a way of doing that because people make their own minds up either way, through association or first impression, so we focused our efforts on more important matters… Let’s decide on what we want to achieve and how we want to shape our brand?
We started to break it down, one thing at a time.
“A brand is made up of many components, your audience joins up the dots”
№1 Brand Values
We wanted the values of the brand to encapsulate an area of London we spend most of our time working and socialising in — East London. A landscape that’s synonymous with creative culture. We wanted it to communicate a message through the use of simple forms and clear messages by means of typography, photography, art and design. We also decided to keep everything black and white, in order to obtain an element of minimalism in everything we do. So with this we had the basis of our brand.
№2 Always limited edition
In an over saturated market it’s difficult to find a unique selling point, so to stand out we decided that everything we do should be limited edition — so as to be constantly evolving. Another reason for this is that we want the person purchasing an item to know that they are one of a select few that will ever own that item.
№3 Give it a name (previously №1)
Always the first thing you think about — “Well what can we call it?” a classic example of spending all your time thinking of a band name and no time actually practicing, so we decided on the brand values first and the name just came to us. Incidentally we spend all of our time working on this project in a coffee shop, just off of Old Street roundabout in London, so you can figure out where the name came from.
№4 Identity & brand mark
Working on the basis of our brand values we spent an afternoon walking around Shoreditch looking for inspiration; having decided on the name ‘OldStCo’ we felt this was a good place to start. The street signs around the area were a good enough starting point, so we based a lot of what we did next on the typefaces used for signage around London — ‘Johnston’ and ‘Transport’. We like the condensed appearance of ‘Transport’ and the association of ‘Johnston’ (being the TFL font). We didn’t want to use either directly so found a nice middle ground — that being Trade Gothic, tweaking it to create our logo.
№5 Evolution of the idea (Co?)
Considering the word ‘Co’ and adding it to the end of our brand name was no coincidence. We liked that this could mean a variety of things — Collaboration, Company, Co-operative, Collective, making it adaptive and open to change, this added to the core principles of our brand and moved us in a totally different direction — what if we could create ‘things’ that don’t fit into the clothing brand space? What if we wanted other people to collaborate on the brand with us?
№6 Independent Collaborators
Following on from the evolution of the idea ‘Co’ (being an abbreviation for the word collaboration; among other things) and the development of our brand values; we liked the juxtaposition of being collaborative — ie. working together to achieve a greater goal but also retaining a level of independence in doing so. ‘Independent Collaborators’ was born…
№7 Small craft, in the big smoke
Going forward we want to provide a personal brand experience and build an ongoing relationship with our customers, to make buying a product exciting from the moment of purchase; through to the opening of the parcel. The personal touch and craftsmanship of a small business in a big city — ‘Small Craft, in the Big Smoke’.
We hope to use Medium as a means to communicate what we do. Keep posted to find out more, watch it grow and to gather an insight into OldStCo.
