Work
Specimens from the board.
Every project below is anonymised at the client's request — names, sectors and identifying detail are altered — but the brand problem, the method and the result are described exactly as they happened. This is what a positioning study, a verbal identity guide or a visual mark rebuild actually changes.
CASE 01 · VERBAL IDENTITY
A BC scale-up's inbox voice, unsoftened.
The problem. A fast-growing British Columbia software company had a confident brand voice on its homepage and an apologetic, hedge-everything voice in support replies and onboarding emails — three different tones depending on which department wrote the message.
The work. We ran an identity workshop with support, sales and marketing leads, mapped where the voice diverged most, and built a verbal identity guide with explicit rules: no unnecessary apologies, no passive constructions burying bad news, one vocabulary list for feature names across every team.
The result. Support satisfaction scores held steady while resolution emails got noticeably shorter and more direct within a quarter, and the founder reported far fewer "can you fix how this reads" escalations landing on her desk.
CASE 02 · VISUAL MARK SYSTEM
A retailer's mark, lost in the feed.
The problem. A multi-location Canadian retailer's decade-old mark had accumulated five slightly different logo files across five sub-brands, and at social-feed thumbnail size it disappeared into a grey smear next to sharper competitors.
The work. We rebuilt the visual mark system from a single locked logo file, a restricted three-colour palette with contrast-tested pairings, and a strict type system — then ran every application through a plain noisy-feed test: shrink it, place it beside five competitors, and check if it still reads in three seconds.
The result. The new mark held its shape and colour across every location's signage, packaging and social presence, and internal design requests dropped because the rules finally answered the "which version do I use" question on their own.
Two More Specimens
Governance and positioning work.
A Vancouver B2B firm's guideline drift, corrected.
The problem. A Vancouver-based B2B firm had a decent brand guideline PDF that nobody opened. Eighteen months on, three agencies and one internal designer had each interpreted the mark differently, and the touchpoint map no longer matched reality.
The work. Rather than rebuild from zero, we audited every live touchpoint against the original specimen board, corrected the drift, and moved the firm onto a brand governance retainer with a monthly review of new material before it shipped.
The result. New sales decks, the careers page and a trade-show booth all matched within one review cycle, and the team now has a single place to check before approving anything new.
A professional-services firm, repositioned around one claim.
The problem. A mid-sized professional-services firm described itself as "full-service" in every pitch — a claim five competitors made identically, leaving prospects with no reason to choose one over another.
The work. An AI-enhanced research sprint mapped exactly how competitors positioned themselves, revealing a specific gap nobody was claiming. A positioning study built the case for owning it, tested through founder interviews and three client conversations.
The result. The firm rewrote its homepage, proposal template and LinkedIn presence around the new claim, and reported that prospects started repeating the positioning back to them, unprompted, in first calls.
Your Specimen Next
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