Sydney was working in black and yellow. Melbourne was using yellow, blue, and pink. Across two cities, the same agency had produced two distinct visual identities -- not by design, but because designers in separate offices had each made their own calls without a shared standard to work from.

One brand, drifting in two directions

By the time Cureative was brought in, the work being produced across both offices was approximately 65% off-brand. The brief was not to design a better-looking presentation. It was to first establish what the brand actually required, then build something consistent enough to hold across both offices without needing ongoing correction.

Auditing two cities’ worth of habits

Cureative started with an audit. Working through the existing output, the team identified which elements were off-brand, which had been applied consistently enough to be treated as a de facto standard, and where the two offices had developed incompatible habits. From there, the process moved to alignment: agreeing with the client on what should remain, what should be removed, and what the correct standard looked like going forward.

A template that keeps the brand on course

The output was a cohesive design system and a PowerPoint template with the guidance built directly into the file. Rather than produce a standalone brand document likely to be filed away and ignored, Cureative embedded the rules inside the template itself. A mini brand guide is visible to anyone who opens it, surfacing the most important decisions at the point of use, not after the fact.

The training component of the project was pending approval at the time of writing.