Wolff Olins

Wolff

CONTENTS

WOLFF OLINS

History

Key People

Structure

Philosphies

Clients

Location

PORTFOLIO Case Studies

WOLFF OLINS

History

Michael Wolff

Wolf Ollins is a global design agency that has been creating transformative brands with the goal to move organizations,peo ple and the world forward. They have been in operation for over 50 years and have been responsible for executing strategy, design and change in order to help advance organizations in moments of inflection. Wolf Ollins was founded by Michael Wolf and Wally Ollins. Miichael Wolff was born in 1933 in England, his parents were immigrants from Russia, St Petersburg. Michael Wolff found little interest in school so he exited in order to spend a year in France where he found an interest in Architecture. Upon return ing to London he enrolled in the Architectural Associate School but later found himself dabbling in Fashion Design and Interior. He passed through Jobs until he finally encountered Wally Ollins.

Wally Olins

Wally Ollins also grew up in London,England and pursued a professional Career in Advertising. His first Job was as a head of an advertising agency, Ogilvy and Mather. Wally was interested in the field of branding and Graphic design before the term “branding” even came into existence. In order to gain more experience he traveled around the world and worked in unusual places all over the globe. The corporations he had worked un der had very high regard for his work and would take Ollins opinions next to the Chairmans. After returning from his expedition he met Wolff which started their collaboration and the founding of Wolff Olins in 1965.

KEY PEOPLE

Brian Boylan

Wolff Olins design agency has been successful in maintaining their relevance throughout the years due to their ability to push the boundaries of Identity and logo design. Their growth began in the late 1900s and the early 2000s as they began expanding their offices internationally, places such as New York,Tokyo and Ma drid. However in 2001 Wally Ollins made the decision to leave the agency, handing his spot over to Brian Boyle who lead a management team to buyout Olins and take over the company while still maintaining the signature name. The company is now headed by a management team but still continues to carry in the legacy of the original founders. Brian Boylan is a lead ing figure in the creative, business and cultural worlds. He has been a key part of Wolff Olins for more than 40 years, as a senior partner for 25 years and for the last 12 years as Chairman.

Under his leadership Wolff Olins has grown from a London-based European-focused business to a global business working with majorinternational, regional and national enterprises via four hubs in London, New York, San Francisco and Dubai.During the same period the output of Wolff Olins has expanded its focus from purely commu nication and design to a much broader, impact led outlook - partnering with clients to shape strategic intention and purpose, create customer experience, develop organisational culture, and build the tools to deliver it all at scale.

STRUCTURE

Wolff Olins is a British advertising agency and corporate identity consultancy. It was started in 1965 and has offices in London, New York City and San Francisco. Their brand philoso phy is strategy,design and change.Wolff Olins has managed to stay relevant throughout the years because they put a lot of importance on the customer’s experience. Wolff Olins strives to identify opportunities the client can unique ly own by analysing their business, their mar ket, and cultural shifts in the world. Wolff Olins activates the clients purpose and proposition with the fundamental creative building blocks all brands need: from logo and colour palette through to bespoke typography and imagery.

Philosophies

The main motivation for Wolff Ollins is to change the approach of design by bringing in new con cepts and ideas while breaking the norm. They strongly believe in brand creativity and use those skills to highlight a company’s personality. Focus ing on new approaches while also having cohesive brand design.The agency specializes in branding. They have worked for clients such as Google, Skype, Uber, Alibaba, and many more. Their vi sual design is innovative, clean, and eye-catching. Many of their visuals include tasteful line art, an effective use of space, and bold colors. Motion and story-telling is a clear gift of theirs. Each case study includes a video that captures the project and the designs that they produced. These videos are stylish, educational and entertaining. Many of the designs they produce are given a life of their own through custom animations, offering the business es they work with an ability to write clear stories from their brand assets. Their impressive use of motion deepens their ability to communicate the story of the brand and the design they produced.

Clients

Uber The Met Genesis Bejing Leeum Vantage Tate Vonage Lafayette Anticipations Abrdn Faber Treatwell Dailypay Istacart Modern Fertility EE

Apple Biossance Belkin Indesit Kodak Little Sun Living Proof Microsoft Native Instruments Sen Sony Ericsson Staples Wacom Zigbee Alliance

London

Bankside 3 90-100 Southwark Street London, SE1 0SW, UK +44 20 3655 9850

New York

195 Broadway, Fl. 17 New York, NY 10007, USA +1 212 505 7337

San Francisco

1050 Battery Street, Fl. 2 San Francisco, CA 94111, USA +1 415 955 1200

Case Study

Uber was another client that reached out to Wolff Olins with a mission to change their company from a rideshare company to a platform for global mobility. Uber was a global organization that operated in 660+ cities globally, encompassing bikes, tuk-tuks and flying cars, which needed a holistic brand system to accommodate them all. Key parts of the brand are a be spoke typeface, designed for hyper-legi bility across 13+ languages, driver-centric stories told through a supportive “U-frame” composition; and a safety blue addition to the color palette to indicate a special moment of care and connection. Uber’s new brand launched on september 2018 alongside a new mission statement and a renewed commitment to safety. Since their partnership Uber’s Brand went up to 51% in value.

The new brand was launched September 2018 alongside a new mission statement and a renewed commitment to safety. We’re thrilled to share that since our part nership, Uber’s brand went up 51% in value. In May 2019, it went public to be valued at more than $82 billion. For more details on the brand launch, check out Fast Compa ny, AdWeek and Uber’s own case study website. Thanks to our tireless collabo rators MCKL Type Foundry and the Uber Brand Experience Team.

Case Study

The Metropolitan Museum of Art was found ed over 146 years ago with the intention of giving everyone, not just the privileged few, a chance to explore new worlds. Today it spans over 5,000 years of global art, and receives around 6 million visitors to its physical locations, alongside millions online. However, audience behaviour is changing. People are more distracted, and expecta tions for participation and dialogue are high er. In 2013, The Met decided to take action. It had to expand its reach and relevance for people everywhere, stay true to its original intent and remain essential in a changing landscape.The Met’s visual identity is often people’s first interaction with the brand. It had to feel welcoming and accessible while retaining gravitas and flexibility across user touch-points, communications and locations.

The ‘common use’ name – The Met – was used in the logo because it’s more familiar and immediate, and red was chosen as the primary colour because of its timeless, cross-cultural symbolism of passion and vitality.The logo mark was crafted by type designer Gareth Hague. It’s inspired by the strategic need to draw connections throughout the Museum, across time and culture, between people and art. The mark connects letters, deliberately combining serif and sans serif letterforms, to acknowl edge The Met’s unique ability to embrace both classical and modern art as part of a united whole.The typographic approach uses a serif font alongside a sans serif font, allowing communications to range from formal to friendly.

Case Study

Genesis Bejing is a public development that combines a hotel, offices, gardens and a museum by Japanese architect, Tadao Ando. It’s a new kind of urban experience in China conceived and led by our client, Dr. Whitney Duan, an academic and social policy expert. She hopes to help repair the loss of community in Chinese society, felt since the Cultural Revolution. She wants to offer an alternative to increasing capitalism and individualism, and believes space can foster both social connection and mental wellbe ing. In line with this progressive conviction and innovative approach, we built a brand based on the Daoist philosophical notion of ‘wu wei’ or ‘effortless effort’. It advocates living instinctively, responding in the moment, and letting change flow. This mindset nurtures a sense of self, as well as empathy and com passion towards others.

The brand is intended to evoke this unique ly Chinese state of mind. It’s built from five patterns or ‘flow states’ that form the expe rience of ‘wu wei’ – play, pause, reflect, ex change, concentrate. Through collaborative effort, we created a visual tool that explores each state and associated feeling through rich, reactive pattern. Genesis Beijing sets a new bar for property development in China – creating space that has a positive influ ence on people’s daily lives. It’s hoped that it will influence other cities in China, and ultimately shape the future of urban design for the better. We’re thrilled that our work with Genesis Beijing was recognised by the D&AD panel in 2017 in two categories.

Case Study

The Leeum Museum of Art, based in Seoul, South Korea, and run by the Samsung Founda tion of Culture, has been passionately building its collection of Korean, international modern and contemporary art since it opened its doors in 2004.In a world where there has been a trend towards increasing divergence and polarisation, Leeum had a mission to celebrate a different cul tural attitude for the people and visitors of South Korea. Its ambition was to become an open 21st century museum of convergence - contributing to the creation of culture through communica tion. A place where people could see and dis cuss traditional, contemporary and international art all in one place. With an opportunity to re launch the museum in late 2021, Leeum needed a brand that could reflect this ambition. We cre ated a new identity for Leeum, all building from the new dynamic logo - a rotating form capturing the cyclical nature of time and reflecting the form of the Leeum’s Rotunda building. It embodies the revolutionary, ever-changing nature of art, inviting and encouraging visitors to interact and experience the art - not to be passive observers but active participants.

The design system supporting the new logo needed to be flexible enough to adapt to the broad nature of exhibits, artists and events that would be held in the museum - to adapt and respect the beauty of the past, as well as embrace the vision of the future. The introduc tion of scale as a key design element enabled the brand to either lead the way or take a more recessive role. And with a new set of motion behaviours, colours and typefaces, the celebration of art could be made more engag ing for all. The brand launched in October 2021 when the museum reopened after the global pandemic lockdown.

We supported the development of guidance and direction for how the new identity could be activated across a broad range of touch points along the customer experience - from signage and communications to social media and future augmented reality experiences.

Case Study

When tackling the greatest healthcare challeng es in the most challenging environments on earth, decisions save lives. Vantage is an AI-en abled platform that is already integral to the care of over 10% of HIV patients globally. It supported the testing of over 6.5 million people, tracked the treatment of more than 680,000, and helped healthcare professionals make the decisions that have led to the viral suppression of 93%.In the rapidly evolving COVID-19 pandemic, Vantage helped screen over 2 million people, identify ing nearly 10,000 potential cases. This reliable real-time information enabled hotspots to be identified, scarce resources to be allocated, and vital action to be coordinated and taken at scale. Working closely with co-founders, we charged Vantage with a simple purpose: To distribute the future of healthcare. ‘Future, today’ is often hyperbole, and for all the power of technology, healthcare is still a deeply human act.

Vantage is not just a marvel of computation, but a trusted colleague: one that is on our side, and at our side, when we need it giving us not only information but step by step guidance to use the next hour better. So, while still built on AI, we focused Vantage’s proposition here: ‘see next, to make now right’. We brought this to life through a new identity, underpinned by “data worlds”: an expansive language for data visualisation that lets the interface be more responsive to human needs in every interaction. The clarity on the pur pose and proposition have allowed the founders to change the way they talk about Vantage. Investors, clients and colleagues can now un derstand it’s distinct solutions and the company is able to explore new healthcare challenges with clarity. The new identity is rolling out across the Vantage platform and is already being seen on the ground as they support the fight against COVID-19 in Africa.

Case Study

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destinations that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These plac es would democratize culture, without dumbing it down.With our help, Tate reinvented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a brand ed collection of experiences that shared an atti tude.We created the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the confusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Modern to signal what kind of art people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate – always changing but always recognizable. We shaped Tate’s visual style, influencing its posters, website, publications and shops, and seven years after launch, we helped Tate refresh its vision for the decade ahead.

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destinations that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These plac es would democratize culture, without dumbing it down.WWith our help, Tate reinvented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a branded collection of experiences that shared an attitude.We created the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the con fusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Modern to sig nal what kind of art people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate – always changing but always recognizable. We shaped Tate’s visual style, influencing its posters, website, publications and shops, and seven years after launch, we helped Tate refresh its vision for the decade ahead.

Case Study

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destinations that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These plac es would democratize culture, without dumbing it down.With our help, Tate reinvented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a brand ed collection of experiences that shared an atti tude.We created the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the confusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Modern to signal what kind of art people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate – always changing but always recognizable. We shaped Tate’s visual style, influencing its posters, website, publications and shops, and seven years after launch, we helped Tate refresh its vision for the decade ahead.

Case Study

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destina tions that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These places would democratize culture, without dumbing it down.With our help, Tate reinvented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a branded collection of experiences that shared an attitude.We created the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the confusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Modern to signal what kind of art people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate.

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destinations that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These places would democratize culture, with out dumbing it down.With our help, Tate re invented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a branded collection of experiences that shared an attitude.We cre ated the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the confusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Mod ern to signal what kind of art people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate – always changing but always recognizable.

Case Study

Standard Life Aberdeen was an 197-yearold company with a highly confusing cor porate structure, exacerbated by a series of mergers and acquisitions.The merger of Standard Life and Aberdeen Asset Manage ment in 2017 had not gone smoothly and the company faced serious questions over its strategy and leadership.Then, in 2021, the company’s new leadership team chal lenged Wolff Olins to help lead a complete transformation. CEO Stephen Bird had a provocative plan to modernise a company that had struggled to find its footing, faced with global competition from players like BlackRock, Vanguard and Schroders.To help deliver the transformation, our brief was to develop a new purpose, a new series of propositions for different business units, and a new global identity that could be applied across everything from websites to offices to sponsorships to advertising - and rolled out at pace around the globe.

The rebrand has not only strengthened and simplified abrdn’s existing business around the globe, it has set abrdn up to make integrating new acquisitions far eas ier - including those of Interactive Investor and of digital advisory businesses like Fin imize and Exo.“Our previous brands were seen as traditional and conservative,” says Simon Bailey, abrdn Global Head of Brand and Marketing. “With the help of Wolff Olins, we wanted a bold move to stand out. We needed to harness and retain the positive equity of the past, while pivoting to focus on the future.“Now we are part of the conversation as to how customers and clients’ needs are changing and how our business model has changed to deliver for them.”Simon Bailey adds: “The brand is not just the name or the visual identity, it’s everything we say and everything that we do.

Case Study

Faber is Britain’s most distinguished inde pendent publisher. Famous for modernist work by authors like Eliot and Beckett, Faber continues to publish ground-breaking books by prize winning authors from Anna Burns to Sally Rooney. Alongside publishing, Faber runs an innovative writing academy, and a fast-growing membership club. In 2019, Faber wanted to sustain its current success into the future by strengthening its brand – encour aging audiences to understand what Faber is about, buy from Faber, spread the word, and keep coming back. Having worked with Faber to define its purpose – to ‘move the dial of culture’ – we now started to translate this idea into a design philosophy, ‘always new’, inspired by the publishing house’s disruptive tradition. We collaborated with type experts Colophon to modernise Faber’s famous ‘ff’ symbol and to create a new wordmark, based on the radical designs.

We introduced a slogan, ‘Words change things’, to help people understand what Faber stands for. And we recommended that initiatives such as Faber Academy and Faber Members should move closer to the core brand, so that they can all benefit from each other. Through the whole process, we worked with Faber’s leadership team to adopt, shape and champion the change – and suggested ideas for new ventures that could give the organisation an even broader impact. The project has already given people in Faber a new sense of iden tity and energy – and an appetite to build the Faber brand, alongside promoting its authors and their books. The new identity launched at the company’s spring party in February 2020.

Case Study

Case Study

Daily pay, a finetech company, was another one of their big clients. They brought inno vation to the way money moves with a mis sion to create a new financial system that works for everyone they hired Wolff Olins. Their challenge was to repositions DailyPay as the champion for trust and transparen cy in the world of money movement. The team worked together to create a disrup tive brand strategy,identity, and voice that better tell their distinctive proposition in an impactful way- building confidence among the modern workers and their workplace. In order to launch the new brand, Wolff Olins created a campaign that brings the com pany’s vision to life. The idea of DailyPay is ensuring that your “money” is always in the right place at the right time by giving the user access to their pay wages as they earn it. The DailyPay brand vision is bold and their investments in technology have created a product that’s way ahead of the competition.

To support the launch, we developed a highly successful go-to-market campaign that invites employees to reimagine their financial lives through their DailyPay Balance. We wanted people to feel that ‘it’s about time’ someone made pay work for life.Less than a month after the campaign’s launch, DailyPay recorded an 89% surge in new-user traffic. The brand has performed successfully with business custom ers and end users, with a 30% increase in B2B leads and with a lift of consumer enrollment by one basis point. DailyPay has since been included in Fortune’s Best Places to Work.With the urgency of implementing improved practic es since the pandemic, this impact affirms the demand for more disruptive financial platform brands in the market.When we committed to building our brand we knew we would need something strong enough to support where we are today but flexible enough to take us into tomorrow. The strategic experts and power ful creative leads at Wolff Olins gave us the confidence and support we were looking for. This work has and continues to make such a difference for us.”

Case Study

In the 1990s, the Tate Gallery had opened new sites in Liverpool and St. Ives and was about to create a huge modern art gallery at Bankside in London. The Tate team wanted to combine all four sites through a shared philosophy.Rather than traditional institutions, they aimed to build exciting destinations that could attract audiences on the strength of brand name alone. These places would democratize culture, without dumbing it down.WWith our help, Tate rein vented the idea of a gallery from a single, institutional view, to a branded collection of experiences that shared an attitude.We created the Tate brand around the idea “look again, think again”: both an invitation and a challenge to visitors. Instead of the confusing “Millbank” and “Bankside,” we named the London sites Tate Britain and Tate Modern to signal what kind of art

people would find inside.We designed a range of logos that move in and out of focus, suggesting the dynamic nature of Tate – always changing but always recognizable. We shaped Tate’s visual style, in fluencing its posters, website, publications and shops, and seven years after launch, we helped Tate refresh its vision for the decade ahead. Instacart successfully implemented their new identity in 2022, energizing their internal teams around the Shop+Savor ethos and inspiring how new offerings come to market. The new brand identity has seen Instacart through their continued growth, to a moment where the brand’s reach now includes over 900 re tail banners and over 5,500 CPG brands.

Case Study

Fertility is an essential part of our health, but still a black box for many. Driven by the conviction that having more infor mation about their fertility gives people greater control and more options, two former Uber and 23andMe executives set about building a direct-to-consumer at-home test. It’s the same one offered in many fertility clinics, but it comes at a fraction of the cost and results are easy for anyone to understand. As part of the growing femtech and personalized medicine sector, Modern Fertility wanted to signal a fundamental shift in democ ratizing health information, as opposed to just delivering tech-enabled conve nience. The challenge lay in humanizing the clinical and impersonal aesthetic that dominates healthcare. This required breaking taboos around fertility, refram ing it as an integral part of overall health, and transforming it into something proac tive rather than reactive

.Also, as a startup seeking additional fund ing, Modern Fertility needed their brand to convey a powerful value proposition and dynamic path to growth. The brand need ed to feel inclusive for a broad range of us ers and circumstances: women wanting to preserve their options, but not yet ready to have children; same sex-partners making decisions about fertility treatment and cou ples struggling to conceive. It had to exist as an intimate community, open to every one. The visual language is an intentional departure from healthcare’s dated graphic devices. The ‘M’ mark is hand-drawn –calligraphic rather than mechanical – to convey trust and invite exploration. A fluid ‘u’ is buttressed by strong vertical lines to emphasize a focus on the individual, and reinforce Modern Fertility’s role in support ing people through their fertility journey. The gender-neutral design is anchored in a color palette of tans and blues, echoing skin and sky tones and symbolic of bodies and moments of reflection.

Case Study

Everything Everywhere wanted to break out and create new growth, by launching Britain’s first 4G network. It aimed to be come the country’s leading network, and to use the power of the new technology to enrich life in Britain. Wolff Olins recommended bringing Orange and T-Mobile together into a single new brand, and we built a business case for this new brand. We created the name EE, and developed a brand idea, ‘now you can’, to empha sise the new capabilities that super-fast 4G would bring to people. The idea also inspired new and better ways for EE to serve its customers in shops and online, making sure that no-one would feel left out of the 4G revolution. We designed a simple logo, with an instantly recognisable graphic pattern, called the ‘smart layer’, to be used as a background. With this we shaped a playful but purposeful tone of voice, using the fewest words to say the most.

The new EE quickly became part of na tional life. Our design still looks as fresh as the day it launched, and the ‘now you can’ idea has morphed organically into a distinctive slogan, ‘who says you can’t?’ Helped by the brand, EE attracted a million 4G customers in the first three months, and was first to partner with Apple to launch the iPhone 5. EE’s value as a business has grown, and it was bought by BT in 2016 for £12.5 billion. The EE brand spirit has helped it become an outstanding employer, and the brand has attracted millions of people into the benefits of 4G technol ogy. As part of BT, EE continues to bring new tech to market first, and launched 5G in Britain in 2019.