Introduction

As a service-oriented business, our focus on growing, designing, and nurturing our clients’ brands often leads to neglect of our own internal projects. This is a common challenge, but it results in our own branding and online presence becoming outdated. Determined to break this cycle, we made a commitment at the end of last year to reimagine our company’s identity, starting with a renewed sense of purpose.

Our company, founded with a passion for supporting purpose-driven and socially impactful organizations, distilled our "why" into a concise phrase:

We are in the business of uplifting people.

While our current forte lies in brand and experience design for clients, we acknowledge the potential for shifts in the "what" and "how" of our business. To accommodate this flexibility, we wanted our guiding principle, our "why," to remain a north star guiding us through diverse daily activities.

To articulate the "what" of our agency business, we formulated our mission statement and boilerplate:

Greater’s mission is to make good trouble as a creative company that transforms brands, experiences, and operations of purpose-driven people and organizations.

To embody these principles, we outlined a set of values shaping our identity and culture:

• Stay kind: We’ve all heard horror stories of how people are treated in creative industries. We're building a space of belonging, where our culture and work reflect our communities.
• Thrive in chaos: Creativity at its core is adaptability and flexibility manifested. With the ability to be open minded to new ideas and information, we believe that failure is never a destination.
• Uphold good: As responsible members of society, we can’t be blind and still. We aim to live through this lens, using creativity and design to positively change our corner of the world.
• Make super: We don’t settle for good—we aim for greatness. We strive to over-deliver, going above and beyond to ensure that our work not only looks great, but has strategic value.
• See the whole: We’re not “yes” people. We’re “why and what else” people. The way we do work isn’t focused on checking boxes off a to-do list but rather questioning and we testing the status quo.

Our visual identity

A note from Alex, a partner at Greater, speaks to the inspiration behind the 2024 brand:

For me, it’s always a hard balance between the agency brand vs. the clients brands. And when we were exploring the visual identity of Greater we felt it could go in two directions: The white box and perfectly neutral backdrop for our client work to shine or the highly branded point of view. But as our confidence and organization has grown, we were inspired to lean into our unique personality.

So, as artists who work primarily in the digital realm, we wanted to capture the human side of the creative process, the side that sometimes is not linear or polished.  We were inspired by those small moments in the design studio: the moodboard of pinned-up clippings, the notes in the margin, the signature at the bottom of a page. We felt like this was a perfect visual vocabulary that could follow through everything in our brand, from logomark to a portfolio reel.

Our brand style is best described as “workshop grunge,” merging various artistic styles, graphic associations, and creative elements to provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of our work.  Along side this new look we unveiled a new logomark, a distinctive script, a signature marking the completion of projects.

Typography and color also play big roles in conveying our new disposition. We chose a variable typeface that nods to the classic sans while allowing us the leeway to play with contrast and scale. Using oversized headers with a limited color palette pulls inspiration from print design with a modern crispness of digital. With this visual toolkit, we open up infinite potential for our creativity while keeping true to our voice.

Websites are living things

A note from Jonathan, a partner at Greater, sheds light on his aspirations for 2024:

“My biggest goal for Greater’s website is increasing the number of updates we push live. Is that a silly goal?
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In 2024, we want to be frequently releasing content as we strongly believe that the organization’s who operate like media companies, regardless of their business will beat their competitors in the marketplace. This means more updates to our current content types like ideas, case studies, social posts, and press releases.
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Also, we want to implement more web and design experiments as we continually work to be the agile and innovate organization that builds a company of longevity and resilience.”

With Webflow Enterprise, we’ve made drastic improvements to our website operations, without sacrificing any customization around functionality and design.

With this platform, we’re testing new ways to display reading experiences. For example, we’ve implemented a new type of online content reading experience that helps produce more focus and legibility by adopting a “flash-card” model that has been popularized in education apps.

We’ll also be uploading more case studies and redesigning some old assets to fit our new brand. We chose to put what we have out there, so you may see less cohesion in certain places of the site now, but those will gradually be adapted. This approach will act as an example for our client partners to prioritize speed and iteration over slow, static (often subjective) perfection. Don’t wait on perfect.

In our future

We are committed to supporting our client partners in creating amazing digital experiences and brands. Last year, we made preparations to launch new areas of work, including but not limited to:

• Motion graphics and animation: We are expanding our team to produce more motion graphics. We will offer a full suite of services that range from storyboarding, full motion graphic videos, website animations/interactions, and 3D designs.
• Content creation: We believe that every company in the future will need to consider how to become a media company in today’s war of attention, regardless of their product/service and industry. This means understanding how to engage audiences 24/7. To support this, we are working closely with clients on content strategy, operations, and production to improve experiences and bring their brands to life.

This year, we’ll be researching and building workflows in two new verticals:

• Spatial design: Exploring how we can position client partners for the 3D space with the release of VisionPro.
• Designing AI: Exploring the intersection of design and artificial intelligence to create more efficient and human-centered businesses.

Moving a little beyond our core business activities, we’re launching a venture arm with a rolling application for purpose-driven startups seeking funding. The work we’ve done over the last few years have supported our startup clients in many ways, supporting their efforts in raising funds, closing large customers, and becoming acquired through the strategic shaping of their brands, experiences, and products. We’re hoping to provide another level of support through funding in the businesses we truly believe in. Stay tuned for more details.

As we embark on 2024, we anticipate another year of growth and innovation. Thank you for being a part of our journey.