&Barr
The ampersand that made room for everyone.
Fry Hammond Barr is a long-standing 4A’s agency. As it became &Barr, we built an identity that honors that history and puts the people shaping its future out front.
- Client
- &Barr, formerly Fry Hammond Barr
- Category
- Advertising agency
- Our role
- Creative direction, brand development, identity, culture strategy
- Milestone
- The agency’s 55th anniversary
The brief
Respect the history, and make the people behind the work easy to see.
The idea
An ampersand is a connector. Put a name after it, and everyone gets a place in the brand.
The result
An identity, a culture book, a website and a giveaway that let the whole team wear the brand in public.
From the name to the neighborhood.
Six places the &Barr brand shows up, from the logo to strangers on the street.
01 The mark
Every name gets an ampersand.
The ampersand leads the logo and links to whoever comes next. Employee names became part of the brand, right down to their web addresses.
Identity and stationery
02 The book
The rules, written like a person.
The identity and culture book tie the visual system to the agency’s character. It sounds like the agency, not a manual.
Brand identity and culture book
Download the complete book
03 The site
Every employee gets a page, and a URL.
Employee blogs let visitors get to know each team member. Each person’s name becomes part of the &Barr identity and the address bar.
Website
View the site
04 The band
Yes, the agency has a band.
Brandy Gill on guitar, Mark Sunderland on vocals and guitar, Mark Robertson on drums, Giles Partington on bass and Charles Caldwell as the bear. A few of the people who keep shaping the brand and the culture.
Culture video
05 The giveaway
Get 5, give 5, for goodness sake.
For the 55th anniversary, employees went out in pairs and handed strangers two five-dollar bills. One was theirs to keep. The other was for a friend, a loved one or a total stranger.
GOODNE55
06 The stories
Then the stories came back.
Every recipient also got a GOODNE55 card pointing to Facebook, where they could share what they did with their five and read what others did.
Cards, tees and buttons
A birthday gift that went the other way.
Fry Hammond Barr was already a big supporter of its community. For its 55th anniversary, it wanted to give back in a different way for the holiday season.
GOODNE55 put a twist on the gift of giving: keep one five, pass the other along, then tell the story.
What we did
- Creative direction
- Brand development
- Identity design
- Culture strategy
- Culture book
- Website
- Community campaign