Made Tech Blog

Introducing our all new brand identity and positioning

Today is an exciting day for us. After months of hard work, we are launching our new brand positioning, identity system and responsive website.

It’s a change which marks the start of our next chapter, and formalises our stepping away from “development agency” towards “software services company”.

I’d like to take the time to explain a little bit about the thinking behind the changes and what they mean for our clients, partners, and the team at Made.

First, a little background: over the past few years we’ve struggled with our positioning. We were seen as different things to different people. We would meet designers who would see us as “web developers”, end-clients who would describe us as their “digital agency” and advertising agencies who would describe us as their “production partners”.

None of this aligned very well with what we actually did. We’ve spent a lot of time re-thinking how we positioned our offering, working out what we we’re best at, what we enjoy doing and what are the most valuable services we can provide to our clients.

This thinking has helped us to define exactly what we want to achieve with the business and what we want Made to be known for in years to come. We’ve summed it up in this brand ideal:

“Made: creating reliable and intuitive software that helps businesses and people to be more successful.”

This may sound a little fluffy, but one of the things we’ve realised over the last couple of years is that a business needs a clear direction, or to cite a Bain & Company phrase: true north, to achieve success.

With this new ideal, we’ve defined our true north and are now focused on executing against this and aligning our whole business around it.

So, what do we mean by “creating reliable and intuitive software that helps businesses and people to be more successful”?

We enjoy working with companies who are trying to drive forward change. When the software we create helps companies to successfully deliver this change, then we’ve done our job.

We find that the best way to achieve this is to focus on creating software that is useful, intuitive and reliable. To give you a few examples of the types of software we mean:

  • Working with a business to streamline internal workflows by creating productivity software.
  • Helping an offline business expand online, by implementing an eCommerce platform.
  • Creating an online service that will help a business to deliver a better service to its customers.

I hope this helps to explain our new brand ideal and provides an insight into where our business is headed.

We’ll be using this brand ideal to validate our internal decisions and to align our recruitment, marketing and communications. As a business, we’re committed to only spending time on things which help us to deliver upon this long-term vision.

We feel this puts us in good place to move into our next phase, which is launching our own Software as a Service (SaaS) products.

Today we’ve got a new product that we would like to announce:

  • YourDayTheirDay – An online service that will help you to run a more organised agency.

This product is still in its infancy, though we’re dedicating a significant proportion of our time to it. We’re keen to hear from agencies who are interested in helping shape the direction of the product by getting involved in our beta program. If you’re interested in a software platform that helps you run a more efficient agency, please do get in touch.

Domain name

You may have noticed that we’ve made a change to our domain name. We’re dropping “Made by Made” and will be using “Made Tech”. We’ll be rolling this name out across our social networks, collateral and other touch points over the coming weeks.

Identity system

We have redesigned our brand identity. We’ve worked closely with Simon Crofts from AttentionSeeking on this, and we think he’s done a fantastic job.

Our brief to Simon was to create an identity system which would provide us with the building blocks and flexibility to grow over time. A system which would allow us to introduce sub-brands and spin off software products which all felt like one family, though at the same time, could stand strong in their own right.

The new logo comes in two parts – the letterforms and the mark. The letterform is based on Gotham Bold — each of the letters have been redrawn to help provide a flow and symmetry across the word. The mark is a simple coloured shape, which mimics the M in Made. It’s this element which will vary across our sub-brands and will help us to develop software products which all feel like part of the Made family.

We’ve also introduced a tagline that will be used on our sub-brands, and will help to reinforce the craft and care that goes on underneath the hood. If you see “Powered by Made”, you’ll know it’s a software product that we’ve created.

We’ve spent time refining the elements to get them to a point where we feel they are right; but it only seems right that as a software company who strongly advocates lean principles that we have a brand identity that can evolve with us. You’re likely to see iterations and improvements to our brand as our products develop and feedback rolls in.

Responsive website

Finally, we’ve also launched our new website! We kicked this project off at the beginning of the year and have been working on the UX, design, build and content over the last 6 weeks.

We’ll be doing a proper writeup of the new site in a couple of weeks, but in the meantime, take a look around and let us know your thoughts.

If you have any questions or comments, please do get in touch. I’d love to hear them.

About the Author

Rory MacDonald

Rory MacDonald

Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Made Tech

Rory founded Made Tech in 2008 and has led the business in delivering organic and profitable growth ever since. They have over 20 years’ experience working in technology services organisations, across both the public and private sectors. In their role as CEO, Rory is responsible for setting the strategic direction of Made Tech and for overseeing profitable growth.