HBJ Gateley Wareing

When the Midlands-based commercial lawyers Gateley Wareing merged with Scottish firm Henderson Boyd Jackson the new company asked Navyblue to create a corporate brand that would make an immediate impact and signal this radical change.

The first merger of English and Scottish firms, the combined company had a new legal status - limited liability partnership. This opens up new opportunities but it also means firms must adopt greater commercial focus.

HBJ Gateley Wareing has a huge geographical and intellectual reach since it spans the UK and covers a number of specialist legal areas.

The challenge for Navyblue was to take account of all of these significant factors while developing a corporate identity and branding that helped the company immediately establish its credentials in the serious, and sometimes conservative, field of the law.

As well as devising a modern, business-edged feel, we achieved this by incorporating a small but important graphic device. This is a diamond-shaped icon that sits unobtrusively as the dot of the 'i' in the company's main logotype. As well as acting as an indication of the four points of the compass (and thus the spread of HBJ Gateley Wareing's activity), it signifies the attention to detail that is a hallmark of the company's approach.

January 2006 saw the start of HBJ Gateley Wareing's combined operations and its brand is helping the company achieve many of its initial objectives.