AVI corporate communications

We have designed and produced corporate communications for this fund management company for a number of years and also created its brand identity.  AVI’s value oriented and low risk investment approach is to find undiscovered value among high quality assets.  This relatively cautious style is reflected in a brand identity which balances traditional quality and modern efficiency and the annual reports we design for its funds.

Contemporary design clarity, subtle print finishing techniques and high quality materials ensure that AVI’s brand projects the right tone of voice.  The logo on stationery features real blind embossing with trompe l’oeil shadow effects to create a subtly understated quality and tactile presence.  A simplified version of the logo is used at small sizes or in low-resolution environments such as the website. The logo is supported by a modern, clear corporate typeface and refined typography.



Brentwood Diagnostic Centre

This brand identity and communications were designed for a chain of diagnostic clinics housing the very latest in high-end medical scanning technology. Brentwood Diagnostic Centre has MRI and CT scanning with digital X-ray services, supported by a staff of top clinical consultants and specialists who serve customers from NHS trusts and local GPs.

A ’spiral eye’ symbol represents care, protection and the expert diagnostic eye of the consultant – the focus of a visual identity which presents the organisation as clinically and technologically sophisticated, yet accessible and unintimidating. The brand has been applied to marketing literature, stationery, signage and extended to other clinics in the expanding ‘family’.





brand assurance: CP Plus

Alembic designed and developed a new brand identity and range of marketing materials for CS Healthcare’s cashplan product: CP Plus – an ‘everyday healthcare plan’.

CS Healthcare is a niche health insurance business originally serving only civil service organisations, but now with a more relaxed remit – although with a fraction of the resources of the major health insurers. Alembic designed a wide range of brand communications for the company including product literature and website. Sub-brand CP Plus had to link through colour and typography to its sister product brands, but present a more eye-catching appearance to new, younger consumers outside the company’s traditional demographic.

brand design top




a brand for Handstand

Workplace wellbeing consultants Handstand commissioned Alembic Design Consultants to create a brand mark and visual identity to help establish the company’s business credentials.  Handstand deals with employee and management issues sometimes viewed as ’soft’, but which ultimately deliver hard business benefits.

We felt the brand should avoid the soft abstract imagery that one might expect.  We noticed that all the characters of the name could be stood upside-down without losing readability so were able to create something visually simple, distinctive and memorable.  The strapline “looking at work differently” completes a concise communication that characterises Handstand’s unique approach. We designed applications including stationery, promotional mailers, seminar aids, the newsletter (‘Newstand’) and the website.

brand design top



Hamilton marketing communications

Early in its development Hamilton Billiards was a craft-based partnership, restoring and reconditioning outstanding period billiard tables, furniture and accessories for private clients.  Our original logotype, incorporating traditional forms and hand-drawn lettering reflected the nature of the business at that time.

Later in the evolution of the company we redesigned our original logo for the company, distilling the elements to make it more effective in a branded environment and better suited to the business’s international marketing horizons, whilst continuing to to communicate the quality of the company’s hand-built products.

In addition to developing the brand identity for Hamilton, we produced a full range of printed marketing communications for the company as well as applying the identity to vehicles, signs, press advertising, stationery.  We also produced promotional and product literature designed to drive traffic to the website which we also designed.

brand design top



characterising image search

This symbol was created in 1999 as part of a brand identity for a small independent picture research agency that provided specialised image search services to clients in the advertising and design industries.

For this pre-broadband era business, the ‘running eye’ symbol was a distinctive and memorable characterisation of the reality of the job: individual researchers travelling around London from library to library in search of the perfect image for their demanding and visually sophisticated clients.

brand design top



Kosovo Youth Education Project

Kosovo Youth Education Project

Alembic developed this brand logo and a visual identity for Kosovo Youth Education Project, a charity aiming to bring together orphans and young people of the Balkan conflict through Summer Schools and other events, programmes and activities in Gjakova, Kosovo and elsewhere in the region, working with students and children from all ethnic groups including youngsters with special needs.

Against this sensitive background, brand imagery and use of colour had to avoid any suggestion of national or ethnic orientation. The identity was designed to appeal in particular to the 8-18 year old orphans who attend the summer schools, yet be flexible enough to adopt a more serious tone in a fundraising context. A full range of stationery, posters and other communications for events and fundraising were designed and produced.

brand design top



revealing quality at Mount Alvernia Hospital

Alembic was commissioned to improve communications at this Surrey private hospital, founded in 1961 by a group of Catholic Sisters from the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood. It was highly regarded by patients but misperceived by the general public as backward, overtly religious and not as effective as its competitors. In fact the hospital had modern professional management, highly-regarded specialists and a very high standard of care. New communications had to reposition the hospital as well-managed and entirely up-to-date, without alienating existing stakeholders.

We took the only brand property, a seal, and used it as a secondary ‘badge of quality’ with a new logo emphasising the name. The third element was a new strapline: “exceptional care”. Alembic designed new materials, producing advertising and literature with direct language and visuals to reveal the real quality and strengths of the organisation.

brand design top



Sports Orthopaedic Spinal

Launching the first of its one-stop orthopaedic clinics in 2006, this company attracts business from both NHS trusts and private ‘walk-in’ customers who need to see the clinics as attractive, accessible and reassuringly professional.

A symbol based on an S-shaped human spine is the focus of a brand identity and print applications which feature photographic images representing the company’s services.

brand design top




The Film Editors

With a thirty-year track record working with film and commercials Directors of the calibre of Alan Parker and Ridley Scott, The Film Editors had a well established business name, but a 1930s-flavoured visual identity suggestive of old technology. Having been some while since ‘films’ were physically edited, the company urgently needed to appear up-to-date, without giving up the equity in their highly respected name.

A much more contemporary approach to their visual identity was necessary. Our solution resulted in the development of this ‘modern monogram’.
 The applications of the brand identity included signage, advertising, media transit bags, labelling and an extensive range of specialised stationery.

brand design top




a Fresh approach for Villeroy & Boch

As part of a brand design project Alembic was asked to develop brand naming for a new range of products. We reviewed the current use of brand names in the UK sanitaryware market, and developed and implemented new brand and sub-brand names.

Alembic has been involved in numerous name generation projects for diverse companies including Aegis plc and Granada Media as well as many smaller organisations and NGOs.

brand design top









This page includes some of our brand design work for clients like Asset Value Investors, Mount Alvernia Hospital and Villeroy & Boch: brand logos and visual identities developed and implemented through literature, point of sale, press advertising, signs, stationery, structures, templates, vehicles and websites.