Exploring our rebrand of global commodity pricing company, Argus Media.

Argus Media enlisted us to lead the design of their global rebrand, aiming to revitalise their well-established brand across all platforms.

Argus Media is the premier independent provider of market intelligence for the global energy and commodity markets. With offices worldwide, and a global team of experts and a range of proprietary platforms and technologies, they reveal and highlight crucial market insights for clients including government bodies, private investors, businesses and financial institutions.

We were asked to lead the redesign of their core visual identity, modernising the visual delivery in a way that respected the brand’s established and respected legacy, whilst also creating modern market relevance.

The deliverables of this extensive rebrand project would include designing a new website, producing corporate videos, creating all supporting brand and marketing assets, as well as a comprehensive brand guide all of which needed to align with Argus’ refined messaging and tone of voice.

Argus needed a brand design that reflected its prominence as a global leader in a more modern, consistent and engaging way respecting its legacy as an established market leader.

The challenge was as exciting as it was large. Before us lay an extensive in-depth scoping and visual development process, requiring us to assess, conceptualise, and refine a new visual direction for the branding. While the logo was to remain largely untouched, we had the creative freedom to shape the rest of their branding and build an identity that felt like a distinct evolution in both visual delivery and overall brand perception.

A series of initial fact-finding meetings and workshops with the Argus team gave us a good feel for the business, an idea of how they were currently perceived, the scale of operations, and the level of expertise and passion held by their teams. From here we mapped out a top-level, strategic approach to define how we could better refine the way Argus was perceived through its branding.

“Evolution, not revolution” was our guiding principle. We aimed to take Argus Media’s existing core brand and evolve it to better reflect the company in 2024, without alienating any existing clients. Breathing life into the existing brand in a way that reflected their forward-thinking mentality.

We conducted an in-depth competitor review to understand the wider market landscape and help us define Argus Media’s position, what their key differentiators were and why clients loved working with them.

We used our competitor review, along with moodboard developments to begin to establish a unique visual direction. The branding design direction needed to better represent the way Argus Media’s team of global industry experts analysed key market data, highlighting the important issues for its clients and, in turn, helped them to make the best investment decisions. This unique approach was key to Argus’ continued success as a market leader, so needed to be central to the brand direction.

Our visual research paved the way for initial brand direction developments, focussing on evolving the brand colours and core brand elements to present a modern look and feel. The colour palette was reinvigorated with the addition of more vibrant colours and the ‘illuminating gradient’, breathing new life into the branding design. The whole direction felt aligned with their brand message, being sympathetic to the legacy of Argus’ brand, but giving the brand identity a much more modern feel.

 

Central to our design work was the exploration of a unique visual device, that resonated with its mission statement – how Argus employs its expertise and cutting-edge technology to uncover and highlight key market insights for its clients.

This was represented in the form of a circular brand mechanic, a versatile graphical device that gave the brand a distinctive look. The mechanic is designed to represent Argus’ approach to analysing and focussing on key market data and could be applied to design work, imagery and video. This evolved to become a central piece of the brand design.

As the branding design project progressed it became apparent that there was a real need to represent the people behind Argus and bring a more human face to the business. With such a diverse global team of industry experts, it was important to bring them to the forefront.

We subsequently art-directed a photo shoot that delivered a library of photographs showcasing team members collaborating and working at the Argus offices in London, bringing a warm humanistic feel to the brand. The distinctive style of photography was established and articulated so that other global offices could also execute photoshoots in a way that was consistent with the new brand direction.

 

As the brand developed we began to finalise all assets through the creation of a comprehensive set of brand guidelines.

The brand guidelines document was developed in collaboration with the Argus team to ensure its practicality and usefulness for maintaining brand consistency. These comprehensive guidelines detail the usage of all aspects of the new brand design, including logos, color palettes, brand mechanics, tone of voice, website guidance, and key brand messaging.

In conjunction with the main rebranding effort, we were also entrusted with leading the design of the new Argus Media website. This undertaking involved detailed scoping of the site map and user journeys, redesigning the user experience, and page structures to create a refined website experience.  The website design utilised the new brand design, applying it to the website design.

The website redesign was a significant undertaking, deserving an article itself to cover all the details. It involved a complete restructuring of their multi-tiered, global content and news-based website. The project aimed to integrate the brand into the interface, incorporating the developed image treatments and visual identity into a highly engaging and modern design.

The rebrand feels far more inspiring, and uplifting and is a better representation of the true nature of Argus Media as a forward-thinking, innovative global leader in the commodity pricing space.

We are pleased that Argus and its global client base have warmly received the new brand design, putting the company in good stead for the next chapter in its story.

If you would like to view the project in more detail then be sure to check out our case study here. If you would like more information on how we can help you refresh your brand and help you connect more effectively with your audience, then get in touch with the expert branding team here at Above Digital.