FROM WORKING WITH BRANDS TO WORKING WITH OUR OWN
We spend a large part of our days working with brands. We conceive them, design them, bring them to life online and build tools to manage them and help them grow within an organisation.
Among these tools are Brand Centres. A Brand Centre is a digital platform that brings together a brand’s knowledge, guidelines and resources so that the people working with it can understand, consult and use it in their day-to-day work. We’ve been developing them for other brands for some time, and at some point, a rather obvious question arose. Why not create one for ourselves?
The need was there. We, too, search for logos, use templates, prepare presentations and constantly create new materials. And new people join us who need to understand what Workoholics is and why we do things in a certain way.
But, as is often the case with internal projects, doing it for ourselves takes more effort than it seems. Client work always has a more pressing deadline, and some decisions end up staying in Figma, in a folder or in the minds of those who were closest to the process.
Meanwhile, the brand keeps moving forward.
ANOTHER MILESTONE FOR OUR BRAND
The Brand Centre is one of the milestones in the brand evolution we began last year. We don’t see it as a place to store what we’ve already done, but rather as a way of ensuring continuity in those decisions and integrating brand management into our day-to-day work.
Because once an identity has been launched, things start to happen. New formats emerge, elements that weren’t anticipated, and questions that didn’t exist when the system was designed. The Brand Centre helps us to gather that knowledge, keep it up to date and make it accessible to the whole team.
That’s the part we’re most interested in. We want the brand not to depend solely on those who helped define it, and for anyone to be able to find what they need, understand where it comes from and use it judiciously. In a way, it also forces us to look at our own brand in the same way we look at our clients’ brands.
HOW WE HAVE ORGANISED OUR BRAND CENTRE
The way we have organised our Brand Centre reflects our approach to understanding and working with brands.
In ‘What Defines Us’, we bring together the brand platform: who we are, where we want to go, and the criteria behind our decisions.
‘Our Voice’ sets out the tone, language and criteria we use when writing at Workoholics.
‘How We See Ourselves’ is home to our visual system: the logo, typography, colour scheme, iconography, photography and the resources used to create each piece.
‘This Is How We Sound’ brings together the elements of our sound identity and explains how we use sound to express our personality and build a recognisable brand.
And in ‘The Brand in Use’, all of the above is applied to real-life situations. Presentations, templates, a signature generator and applications that appear as we use the brand.
In this way, we move from who we are to how we express it and, finally, to how we use it. Anyone visiting the Brand Centre won’t just find a collection of files to download. They can first understand what lies behind Workoholics and then delve into the details they need.
DIGITAL BRAND MANAGEMENT, HERE TOO
We are digital by nature, and our approach to brand management had to be too.
We didn’t want to simply transfer a set of guidelines onto a website. We wanted a tool that we could use, update and develop with ease – adding content, expanding a section or incorporating new features as they arise. If our brand changes, the Brand Centre changes with it.
We also prioritise something that matters greatly to us in projects for other organisations: the user experience. Finding a template or understanding a decision should be straightforward. Having lots of information is of little use if it’s hard to access.
And this is where we have a particular advantage. We are the ones who have built the tool and the ones who use it, so feedback is immediate. When something is hard to find, we realise it. When a resource is missing, the need becomes apparent. And when something works, it becomes part of our daily routine almost without us thinking about it.
Having all that knowledge organised and up to date allows us to go one step further.
AN AI AGENT LINKED TO OUR BRAND
We have integrated an AI agent linked directly to the Brand Centre itself. We can ask it where to find a resource, what criteria to apply or how we write at Workoholics, but we can also ask it to verify a decision, review an application or help us adapt a piece of content.
The difference lies in the foundation on which it operates. It doesn’t respond based on generic knowledge of branding, but on ours. The platform, the guidelines, the resources and the decisions we’ve gradually built up and validated.
It makes sense that it should be this way. We’re doers. We like to think things through, turn them into reality, use them and keep refining them. The Brand Centre stems from this way of working, and the agent takes it a step further.
AND IT DOESN’T END HERE
Our Brand Centre isn’t finished. Nor do we want it to be.
New people, applications and decisions will continue to emerge – things we can’t even foresee right now. The tool will grow alongside all of this, making the management of our brand increasingly straightforward.
After creating Brand Centers for other brands, it was time to make one for our own.
And, whilst we were at it, to practise what we preach.