Tapping into Our Years of Experience for a Complete Rebrand
As with any corporate rebranding project, our relationship with Stern Cohen began with a series of discovery meetings and conference calls to collectively identify project goals and put together our initial logo design and website design strategy. Through this process, we aim to not only gain a more thorough understanding of our client’s business and service offerings, but also get to know the people and corporate culture that makes this group of Toronto-based financial service professionals unique within their industry, and from their top competitors.
Following our early strategy work, our team created a plan of action that would serve as a roadmap for all parties involved in the corporate rebranding to follow, for the logo design and subsequent accounting firm website design work. With our plan in hand and ready to begin our creative journey together, we tackled the rebranding exercise first with a slew of logo design concepts that we reviewed internally in order to narrow down our best work for presentation to our client.

Design Strategy that Works
Having already invested significant time in our design strategy with the Stern Cohen team in the early going, we had a clear vision of their unique personality, which would ultimately help us design what would become an award-winning brand in the North American financial industry. This process was extremely quick and smooth for everyone involved, as lines of communication and design feedback remained open throughout the rebranding process. Within a week we had a strong, contemporary logo design that brought the firm’s corporate image forward from its predecessor. With this first step behind us, our graphic designers began expanding this new brand and developing new corporate communication materials and marketing tools, including business cards and a series of print ads for industry events and publications.

Key features in the new website design for this financial services firm included subtle parallax scrolling effects to create visual interest and offer improved user engagement. More emphasis was placed on the Stern Cohen team, their personal stories and methods of contact, including downloadable v-cards and connections to their informative social media accounts. A careers section was designed offering the ability for the website administrator to easily post job openings, which connected to web application forms in order to minimise our client’s day-to-day efforts by automating as much of this process as possible.
In addition to the new careers section, our Toronto website designers created and developed a secure members portal allowing Stern Cohen’s clients to register online and upload their financial information securely to their assigned accountant, as well as providing access to downloadable files and forms previously managed individually by each accountant or their assistant.