• Studio Nice One Creative Director Amy Quickfall on creating brand identities

Impactful design and strong branding can leave a lasting impression on a consumer’s mind, even though consumers are often ignorant about the engineering behind such strategies and tactics. Companies cannot claim similar ignorance, and must at least recognise the value and power of branding.

Citing data from Forbes, Studio Nice One Creative Director Amy Quickfall shared that a company with strong branding can increase their revenue by 23% as customers are four times more likely to seek out one brand above another when they connect with it.

In conversation with The Daily Morning, Quickfall elaborated on the crucial role design plays in shaping a brand’s image and customer perception. She also spoke about what led to establishing Studio Nice One in Colombo, given her British roots.

“I was always creative from a young age, and followed the path through school and into university where I studied fashion marketing at Northumbria University, England. The course was focused on creating brands for fashion, with an option of creating clothing or a concept publication, and I really got into graphic design by creating a publication,” Quickfall shared.

She went on to say that as the course had a marketing aspect, all concepts needed to fill a gap within an identified market and solve a problem, which was her first introduction to branding with purpose. “I was offered a one-year placement in London with a menswear fashion consultancy, and have been in the field of design ever since, undertaking positions that most often blended branding and fashion,” she added.

By December 2016, Quickfall had moved to Sri Lanka, and two years later, had established Studio Nice One.

Following are excerpts from the interview:

Take us through your journey, from relocating to Sri Lanka to establishing Studio Nice One.

I had always wanted to live and work overseas, having travelled a lot before starting my career, and I also felt like I didn’t have a lot of creative control working for larger, corporate organisations. At a chance meeting returning to Graduate Fashion Week in June 2016 to see the work of students from my old university, I met Stuart Macleod who was with Amesh Wijesekera, a student from Academy of Design (AOD), Colombo who was nominated for international designer of the year.

After a brief chat, Stuart informed me that AOD was soon to launch the same fashion design and marketing course I had undertaken and they were looking for someone to be Programme Leader (PL). We exchanged details and by September 2016 I had moved out for a trial, and by December 2016 I had started a new life in Sri Lanka. The contract for PL was two years in length, and the role taught me everything needed to run a business; hiring, timetabling, giving feedback to designers, as well as being a leader.

After seeing the potential in Sri Lanka with rapidly growing tourism, hospitality, and textile industries, as well as a huge market for the export of local products, I established the design studio with the purpose of focusing on branding. Sri Lanka had grown to be home at that point and I had no plan or desire to leave, and I had met so much young talent through teaching that needed creative design jobs to go to after graduating, so that’s how the studio first came to be in 2018.

What services does Studio Nice One offer? Are there any particular industries you work with or specialise in?

We specialise in creating brand identities for new and existing companies, which most often involves creating a strategy for the company to create a framework to design to, then we move into an extensive research process before approaching designing the brand. A full brand design consists of a logo suite, colour palette, brand language (tone of voice), typography and how it should be used, illustrations, and brand patterns, and then this outcome forms the basis of the brand.

Most clients come to us as they have a physical space to open or they have a product to sell, and we then take that brand and apply it throughout their business so they can operate as a branded company. Our two main niches are hospitality and tourism, so we create brands for bars, restaurants, and hotels. And we also specialise in food and beverage packaging.

As Sri Lanka has a lot of raw product that is exported, we have created a lot of brands that harvest these raw ingredients and turn them into brands that get exported and sold in retail, such as cinnamon brands, spice brands, coffee brands, and tea brands.

In addition to brand creation, we also offer some standalone services in collaboration with our creative network such as website design, photography and video for marketing, and fashion design services such as tee graphics and textile print design.

How can companies benefit from working with a branding agency?

We often see clients who have invested into developing a physical space, such as a bar or restaurant, or a physical product but their brand is not developed and therefore it does not stand out against the competition. Design plays a crucial part in shaping a brand’s image and customer perception, and a company with strong branding can increase their revenue by 23% as customers are four times more likely to seek out one brand above another when they connect with it (source: Forbes). A consistent brand across all of a company’s channels (website, social media, physical space/stores and any brand touchpoints) can increase brand awareness by up to 80%.

How has the company grown over the years, and what does the Studio Nice One team look like?

When we first started, I had employed two ex-grads who I had met during my time teaching at AOD, which was great for first starting out. However, as the company’s clientele grew, I needed designers with more experience that could take on more responsibility. I have always kept the team quite small, as since starting in 2018, Sri Lanka has faced many difficulties, from terror attacks to pandemics and an economic crisis. So it was more important to me to ensure the business remained in operation over growing a large team.

Since the crisis we have slowly increased our customer base; however, I purposely choose to keep a small team to ensure adequate mentorship to designers and ensure a high quality output in terms of projects. We operate more as a boutique collective than a large agency, which provides a more personal service to clients and a hands on approach for all team members. Studio Nice One now consists of myself (Creative Director), Akila (Senior Brand Designer and Illustrator), Dewni (Brand Designer and Strategist), and Hesmi (Assistant Designer and 3D Artist).

How does the team offer global solutions to local brands?

We undertake a huge amount of research to ensure we are competing on an international level and are aware of what is happening within our target market sectors. I tend to go back to the UK and Europe once a year, as well as the occasional city trip in South East Asia, such as Bangkok or Kuala Lumpur, and when I’m in those locations, I am always visiting exhibitions, retail stores, and restaurants and photographing inspirational packaging examples to ensure we have inspiration and to see what the big players are doing outside of Sri Lanka. Our goal is to bring a global benchmark of design to Sri Lanka, and we need to use our experience and knowledge to elevate brands in Sri Lanka to compete on an international level.

What goes into branding? What’s the process like when working with a brand on its launch or relaunch?

A huge amount of research, a lot of listening to the needs of the client, and understanding their business and plans for growth. We also need to understand what is happening within the market and ensure we don’t design to short lived trends, but design with longer term growth in mind. A lot of less experienced designers simply take some images from Pinterest without much thought of the problem they are trying to solve for the client, and do some basic designs. Whilst this might be sufficient for a single person small start-up selling through Instagram, for example, it is not sufficient to help a company grow and scale for the future. Usually, we work with larger companies who have reached a plateau in their business or want to launch or rebrand a new product, or sell in a new market or country.

During the launch phase we ensure all designed assets are well organised and easy to access; we offer email support to cross-check any new items that may have been designed by a company’s in-house team; we do site visits to physical spaces; and for packaged product we work with companies to sign off before final print runs. We also offer social media support if required to ensure online channels are in line with the intended brand outcome.

Do Sri Lankan companies practise value branding? Are they aware of the importance of investing in it?

When we first started, it was a much harder sell, and it took a long time for companies to really value and understand the investment they were making. However, the tourism sector has continued to grow massively, and Sri Lankan food products and cuisine has been growing in popularity in recent years.

This has brought more competition in the hospitality sector, and Sri Lankan clients have definitely realised a good product is no longer enough, especially if they want to export, they need a solid brand to be able to operate at a higher level. The earlier clients that have invested in branding have been able to expand and as such, when other companies have seen the growth and benefits, they also want the same so it has been less of a hard sell in more recent years compared to the early years.

How has branding changed over the years? How do you incorporate the latest trends with unique design and brand identity?

Nowadays, there are more channels for marketing, and consumers are much more discerning and want to know about supply chains and matters of an ethical nature. With so much choice, a brand’s message must be clearly communicated to avoid confusing customers. Customers connect to brands emotionally and with social media, they feel like they can speak directly to brands so it’s important brands have a clear tone of voice and are confident in their communications. We try to avoid fully trend-led design as they can fall out of favour when the trend passes; however, it is important to understand consumer and marketing trends to connect with the right audience.

What does 2024 look like for Studio Nice One?

We have not had a fully operational website since we branded last year, so we are aiming to relaunch this as soon as possible. We are also working hard to update our online portfolio as we had a backlog of projects that launched after Covid-19 and we got caught up in working on new projects, so we want to showcase as much work as possible on the website.

We are also working on a partnership with a Malaysian university to offer Sri Lankan designers scholarships, which we’re really excited about, and we are continuing to improve our pricing structure and offerings such as design intensive days to make branding quicker and more accessible to smaller businesses.