International Art Consultants
Creating an inspiring brand
International Art Consultants has been providing strategic art consultancy services to businesses, developers, and private clients for over thirty years. It offers the complete range of art consultancy services from audit, art strategy and planning, to procurement, installation, art rental and ongoing art curation, encompassing both art for offices, public art and private clients.
The new CEO asked Manifest to help bring alive his vision for change and growth which called for a full brand review process, repositioning, rebranding and relaunch.
The challenge
By the time we became involved, the usefully descriptive name of the business had become a bland acronym; IAC.
While the client had volumes of commissioned research to prove that art in offices can increase staff satisfaction and productivity, and can turn new developments into visited destinations, our research found that their business audiences persisted in a view that art in the workplace was a superficial decoration without deeper benefits.
We had to find a direct and memorable way to communicate the core business value and return of the offer if the business was to achieve its planned growth.
Art has the power to transform people and places, increasing staff satisfaction and boosting productivity
Our bright thinking
• Vision and Values
• Qualitative research
• New brand strategy
• Internal workshops
• Strategic Consultancy
• Service design and alignment with brand
• Website design and build
• Launch
Our internal engagement, including workshops and exercises, revealed an exceptionally talented team with a profound belief in the transformative power of art; the power to transform the workplace or a new development, the power to improve staff satisfaction and productivity.
We advised our client to abandon the acronym IAC and revert to the full name, International Art Consultants to make the proposition clearer, as well beneficial for SEO.
Having set ourselves the task of distilling the essence of an exceptional team with the power to use art to transform the lives of others, we developed the phrase 'Inspiring People' with its intriguing double meaning.
Our inspired creativity
In exploring suitable symbols to express inspiring people we created a cross between a star and a sun that also subliminally creates a circle to express holistic completeness.
The colour palette uses a bright yellow to reference the inspirational and transformative power of art, contrasted by a range of sober greys to reflect the serious business of enhancing productivity and turning a new development into an aspirational destination.
We designed and built a new website with navigation that enables different customer segments to reach relevant content in one click. We used the shorthand phrase ‘Inspiring People’ to bring the focus of the proposition not on art but on the power of art to transform lives and workplaces.
