McMillan

Agency Rebrand

ROLE
Brand Creation + Direction, and Lead Design

Background

As a Director at McMillan, I was lucky enough to be offered the opportunity to rebrand the company in time for its 20th anniversary. Working with a fantastic team , I led the new brand direction and identity across over 200 deliverables. The release? A big party.

“What got me was the business cards that kind of sum up the effort: they are elegant and serious but with a creative flair that’s just the right amount for the business-to-business clients they do business with.”

Official Review in Brand New – Under Consideration

Breaking the Rules

There’s often a misconception that the B2B world is drab and outdated. But it can be fresh and exciting, and the new brand set out to reflect that.

Over the past few years, the agency had evolved to include two “arms,” though they’d be better described as multiple personalities than true silos. There’s the McMillan we’ve always known, and then there’s McM, the creative side that pushes boundaries.

One of the ways the new brand conveys the agency’s creativity is with patterned backgrounds that will change seasonally, which the art directors are using behind the logo mark and as pause screens in client presentations to make the “corporate” a little more convivial.

Read more about the brand approach in my article here.

Also part of the rebrand: animated gifs, updated wayfinding throughout the office, employee swag, a vintage McM sign handmade by a local metal artisan, and a simple black-on-white exterior sign, backlit by a bulb that can change colours on a whim. Everything we’ve been touching when it comes to this brand is to push our creativity and think of it in a different context.

McMillan’s new onboarding package includes an augmented reality printed book: if you hover your phone over a printed page with one of the McM logos, the logo will spring to life with full video animation right on that page.