Hasta La Ideas

With its minimally graphic logo, post-production house The Mill has one of the more distinctive marques in its sector. SomeOne has now developed those familiar lines into an extensive visual identity system for the facility

The Mill logo, in which the company name is spelled out in film strips, was originally designed by North. It replaced the facility’s original illustrated marque, which was created by Siobhan Keaney 20 years ago.

The Mill now has offices in London, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago and employs more than 650 staff, but lacked a coherent branding system beyond its well-known symbol with its echoes of Muriel Cooper’s MIT Press marque.

SomeOne was asked to create a scheme that coud be applied to The Mill’s communications, stationery and merchandise, and has devised a series of geometric patterns inspired by North’s design.

Aquamarine and orange have been introduced to complement the brand’s existing black and white colour scheme, and the identity will feature on T-shirts, umbrellas and water bottles as well as marketing material. Other applications are still being developed, and a new website and animated idents will be released in the first quarter of this year.

SomeOne co-founder Simon Manchipp says he hopes the system will give The Mill’s various departments a cohesive identity, particularly as the company expands its creative offering and its US offices.

“The Mill…goes about its business with style and humour. Yet its globally connected and witty approach to work was missing from the way it represented itself visually – all it really had was a logo (albeit a lovely one!),” he says.

The decision to keep North’s logo and expand on it was immediate, and no alternative designs were discussed, adds Manchipp.

“The traditional response from a branding agency, if they didn’t create a mark, is often to throw it away and start again. But The Mill’s logo is universally loved by the agency and people in the industry – everything in it gels perfectly – so it was the last thing that needed fixing. We started from a position of strength and went on from there,” he says.

Great to see a design studio resisting change for change’s sake and instead developing a great asset.