Strategy, naming, identity, communication

Most organisations don't have a design problem. They have a clarity problem.

We're Alkamee. We find the one thing you are actually saying, then we make the name, the mark and every word around it say that, for years, without you having to be in the room.

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Harold's Cross, Dublin 6W. Working with ambitious organisations since 2004.

A stack of printed green booklets, the cover motif drawn as three overlapping hearts in concentric lines

A close crop of an identity mark, orange curve running across a magenta ground

Campaign photograph printed in a single red duotone, a man looking down at the baby in his arms

The clarity test

Everything you could say is the reason nobody remembers any of it.

Pick a sector. Every line below is true, and all of them are competing. Step through what we do to them.

71 words on the page

We are one of Ireland's leading energy suppliers.
We supply gas, LPG and electricity nationwide.
Our customer care team is available six days a week.
We are committed to a lower carbon future.
We have served Irish households for over fifty years.
We offer competitive rates and flexible tariffs.
Our engineers are qualified, local and on call.
We deliver to farms, homes and businesses.
Energy you never have to think about.

An illustration of the way we work, not a case study. The lines belong to no named organisation.

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Use the four steps, or the left and right arrow keys.

Selected work

A brand is judged at the size a customer meets it, not on the presentation slide.

So this is the work at that size: printed, photographed, painted on a wall, cropped down to a single mark.

A stack of green printed booklets on grey, cover motif of three overlapping hearts drawn in concentric lines — Savvi Credit UnionA stack of printed welcome books. The cover motif is built from concentric hearts, and it survives being folded, stapled and handed across a counter.

An identity mark cropped very close, an orange curved form crossing a magenta field — PayzoneThe mark, cropped past the point of recognition. If it still holds here, it will hold on a terminal screen the size of a beer mat.

A photograph printed in a single red duotone, a man smiling down at a baby held in his arms — The Irish Heart FoundationOne colour, one photograph, a man and a baby. Nothing in the frame is doing a second job.

A girl picking strawberries between two rows of plants inside a polytunnel — La Rousse FoodsA grower's polytunnel, picked by hand. Food brands buy stock photography of food. This is a photograph of where it came from.

A person in an orange apron behind a cafe counter, bags of coffee on the shelf above — FlogasBehind a counter at opening time. An energy brand is met in the rooms it heats, which is where the photography should be.

A modern corner building at night with a tram passing in motion blur, graded from deep blue into red — Parthalán PlaceThe corner at night, a tram going through the shot. A place brand is read at speed, in the dark, by someone who is not looking for it.

A city corner at night, lit windows above and a tram passing in motion blur below

Place branding

If it only works in the brand guidelines, it does not work.

A name has to survive being glanced at from a passing tram, printed on a hoarding in the rain and typed into a search bar by somebody who half remembers it. We design for that reading, not for the pitch.

How we work

Four things, in order, and nothing starts with a logo.

Strategy
We start with what is already true. Research, conversations with the people who actually deal with you, and the patterns nobody inside has had time to name. The output is a decision about what to leave out.
Naming
The hardest working asset you will ever own, and the one you can least afford to test only in a slide. We say it out loud, in a room, down a phone line and into a search bar before anybody draws it.
Identity
The mark, the type, the colour and the rules that hold the whole thing together when you are not there to explain it. Built to work at a millimetre and at a storey high.
Communication
Then everything that carries it: the words, the photography, the printed thing in somebody's hand. One argument, repeated until people can say it back to you.
And after
Brands drift. We stay on as brand stewards when you want the position defended year after year, as you grow and change shape around it.

A studio shelf: ferns above, a stack of Monocle Forecast and Entrepreneurs issues, and the Monocle Guide to Good Business open on a stand

The studio

Two principals. One room in Harold's Cross.

Between us we have more than sixty years of branding behind us, in Ireland and in Australia, before we started this. You get both of us on the work, which is the whole reason a business the size of ours can sit across the table from a business the size of yours.