Branding
Ellis Bates
A full rebrand for an established financial advice firm, bringing every touchpoint together into one brand as trusted as the advice itself.
Services
Sector
Year
Brand identity, brand guidelines, tone of voice, website, printed materials
Financial advice
2024
Chapter One
Where the story began
Ellis Bates is a well established firm of financial advisers, with a head office in Harrogate and teams across Newcastle, Edinburgh and London, guiding clients through everything from pensions and investments to mortgages and inheritance and estate planning. The substance was all there, years of expertise and genuinely trusted advice. But the brand around it had grown piece by piece over time, and across all those offices and materials it no longer pulled in one direction. For a firm whose whole promise is trust and reassurance, a brand that looked inconsistent was quietly working against everything they had built.
Chapter Two
What we uncovered
With financial advice, the brand has one crucial job. It has to signal trust, stability and care before a single conversation happens. Ellis Bates had earned all of that in practice, but you could not feel it by looking. So this was never about a prettier logo. The real opportunity was consistency, one coherent brand that felt as considered and reassuring as the advice itself, and that worked exactly the same way whether someone met the firm in Harrogate or in London. The task was to pull everything together and give Ellis Bates a single, confident voice and appearance.
The Outcome
One coherent brand that looks as established and trustworthy as the firm behind it, working consistently across every office and every touchpoint, so clients feel they are in safe hands long before the first meeting.
Chapter Three
The next chapter
I brought the whole brand together into one considered system. That meant a refined logo, a complete visual identity built around a confident palette of deep blue and gold with Playfair Display and Calibri typography, and a brand guidelines document so everything stays consistent across every office and every piece. I defined a clear tone of voice so the firm sounds as thoughtful as it is, designed a new website that lets the expertise come through with clarity, and pulled the printed materials together, from business cards and compliment slips to letterheads and brochures. It all works as one brand now, with the tools for the team to keep it consistent going forward. Ellis Bates finally looks as established, trusted and considered as the advice it has been giving for years.
