Kontent Design updates the look of Amherst
24 November 2009
Amherst, one of the top broker-dealers in the world of finance, came to us a little over a year ago in need of a facelift, new brand guidelines and a new family of websites. Over the years, expansion had left things disparate and disconnected.
First, we approached everything from the ground up, taking stock in what they had and discussing the vision of where they wanted to go. They needed a wide range of print materials for both potential and existing customers. They also wanted their websites to be dead-simple and be as consistent as possible.
We refined the Amherst colors into a more harmonious palette that they could use in print and on the web. We then created a range of designs that fit their brand essence—honing in on the one that gave them a clean and modern look to offset them from the average "stodgy" look and feel of their competitors. We settlied on using Adobe Garamond Pro and Helvetica Neue as their primary and secondary fonts.
Tackling AmherstHoldings.com and AmherstSecurities.com came first (followed by Amherst Derivatives Trading and Amherst Funding). This became a challenge since the client didn't want any images on either site and they wanted as much white space as possible. As the epitome of simple and usable, the site features contact information, financial updates, downloadable documents, and other pertinent company information. We also built an addition to their company intranet to provide a central repository for shared documents like brochures and media assets.
We put together a draft of the new brand guidelines early on, but they've been refined throughout the process of building each of these crucial pieces. So they'll go through another update to sync up all of our hard work over the past year in the coming weeks. We're very pleased with how things have come along and will continue to partner with Amherst in their event planning and other media needs.
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