Francesca Romano Design

Latchmill, a small consultancy specialising in data-driven growth, wanted a professional and impactful visual identity to capture the brand’s personality and present the company to the public. A key requirement was a set of branded templates to enable Latchmill to communicate directly with clients in a professional way.

Through close collaboration with Latchmill to understand the company values and vision, the project team and I developed a visual identity that balances simplicity and potential. Latchmill can manage client communications independently with a suite of professional, easy-to-edit templates that set them up for future growth.

To create a visual identity that would really represent Latchmill, we needed to understand its mission and aspirations, and how the company works. We met with co-founders Gavin and Andrew and ran them through discovery exercises using a digital whiteboard. This helped them formalise their own thinking about the company, and provided a solid foundation for the next steps of the project.

The logo is representative of the character of the company: straightforward, direct, and impactful. A small twist makes it unique, in the joining of the ‘h’ and ‘m’. To make sure the details were just right, we worked with a type designer to refine the letters until they worked together perfectly, resulting in a distinctive custom logo.

A key requirement was that Latchmill be able to manage branded materials on their own using their preferred software, the Microsoft Office Suite. We wanted the branding to perform best in this software, so the visual identity was designed with this as the central focus. At the end of the project, Latchmill had tailor-made Word and PowerPoint templates that can be used to create a variety of on-brand documents, from pitch presentations to one-on-one correspondence with prospective clients.

To assist Latchmill employees with creating their own materials, we produced a guide with design directions to maintain a clean, consistent style across charts and infographics. The style guide also details tone of voice for written communication, and a summary of the brand values and mission, which were identified during the strategy stage.

Latchmill’s central framework comprises a flexible five-part process, which they share with prospective clients to explain their approach. We worked with Latchmill to visualise the process, and the resulting graphic can be used on their website and in pitch decks to provide a clear, understandable illustration of their working method.