There is a lot to share with you and as always, we’d love to hear any feedback you have!
New branding
It’s been two and a half years since we last revised our branding and this is very much an evolution of that, rather than revolution. Over that time we have felt that our branding was close but not quite there, that is in terms of getting across the message of who we are and how we work. We still wouldn’t suggest we’re ‘there’ but it’s a definite step forward!
Following that Xerocon Jonathan took part in a course run by The Profitable Firm and after completion, engaged them to help answer the two main queries we had about our brand.
- We love the name Raedan but is it confusing to clients?
- We love our brand but why doesn’t it feel quite right in describing who we are?
Along with Col at Pixels Ink, both questions were answered quite resoundingly.
Raedan is a variation of a real word with a real meaning that applies itself brilliantly to who we are (read more). When using the original word we came across issues in it’s usage and so decided to ‘modernise’ the spelling. The concern was that in changing the word slightly, the original pronunciation that we were trying to stick with was no longer relevant. This was causing confusion and uncertainty over the brand.
So after some great conversations with Karen and Col, the advice, in simplification, was to change the pronunciation too! We had tried so hard to stick with the tradition of the word but Karen quite rightly said, that in the same way we are changing the traditions of accounting, so we can change the tradition of the word. If clients now say the word differently, change it to what clients say. I guess the customer is always right!
The same message permeates the branding. Col did some brilliant work on examining the tradition of the word and looking to replicate that in the branding but when reviewed, keeping too much of the tradition left a mixed message about who we were and that in turn answered our uncertainty over our previous logo. The abacus, whilst contemporary in design, was old fashioned…and we’re not!
So we come to our revised logo, a subtle change yet a great evolution to settle those uncertainties and provide a brand that much more closely reflects the journey we’re on.
New website
Websites are one of those projects that are never truly finished and on reflection we think that’s right. They should be fresh and filled with relevant content and as such, they should keep changing.
Technologies and ‘fashions’ in web design also constantly change and after just 12 months a site can seem dated. Whilst we don’t intend to redo our work again in 12 months, we think across the web we’ll see sites evolve over time rather than the old pattern of a 5 year redesign.
Again the new design is an evolution and some may see little difference but the content is a great improvement on what we had before and there is a great deal more to come. The content of both our site and blog will be with the focus of helping you run your business and understand it more easily.
We’ve worked with the brilliant team at The Animation Guys to produce our first video, an Introduction to Raedan.
The brief was clear, a video that celebrates the technology we use but shows the human element of how we work. It’s brilliantly produced, we love it and hope you love it too!
In addition to the usual email and phone, we now have a live chat function on our website for asking quick general questions. For our clients we would still suggest emailing your relevant contact as that will get the most complete reply but do feel free to use it for any generic queries you might have like ‘How do I pay HMRC? How do I add an item to Receipt Bank? How do I create an invoice in Xero?’.
Xerocon 2017
This week a number of our team will be heading to Xerocon at the ExCel in London. It’s been described as the Glastonbury of accounting and we love it, it generates real excitement amongst the team! It covers all the latest trends in cloud accounting and provides insights into what comes next so that we are well prepared to brief our clients. Look out for our communications next week as we feedback on what we find out.
