Affinia
Creative Director: Andy Lewis
Designers: Jacob Everett, Emma Sokell, Laura Sheridan
#Brand Design #Visual Identity
Scaling a financial powerhouse through strategic rebranding
When LB Group reached a nexus point in their growth—aggressively acquiring firms to move from a Top 200 to a Top 40 accountancy and tax advisory firm—they lacked a unifying identity that reflected their new national scale. I led a comprehensive, lean, three-month rebranding sprint to transform the firm from a traditional, initial-based collective into Affinia: a disruptive, relationship-focused challenger brand. By replacing conservative corporate tropes with a vibrant "Action Orange" and "Forest Green" palette and a lyrical, human-centric name, we successfully positioned the firm as a modern leader in a traditionally stoic sector.
The project was an exercise in strategic stakeholder management and scalable system design. We orchestrated collaborative "name-storming" workshops to turn potential internal naysayers into brand advocates and developed a flexible visual language rooted in a "connectivity loop" motif. Beyond the visual identity, I oversaw the creation of a digital-first brand portal and a comprehensive office livery system, ensuring that as Affinia grew from four to eight offices and beyond, the brand remained consistent, premium, and purposefully disruptive.
From 'Group' to 'Leader'
Affinia (formerly LB Group) was at a critical juncture. Through a series of rapid acquisitions north of the M25, they were scaling at pace with an ambition to break into the UK’s Top 40 accountancy firms. However, their legacy branding—a collection of initials and safe corporate blues—didn't reflect their status as a high-growth advisory powerhouse. Our brief was to define and craft a new, unifying brand that could act as a differentiator in a sea of sameness, shifting the perception from a "cold collective" to a "partnership-led" firm.
Collaborative buy-in: the name-storming workshop
Recognising that accountancy is a risk-averse discipline, we designed early discovery phases to bring key stakeholders along for the ride. We hosted "name-storming" workshops that invited stalwarts and new recruits into our studio to map the firm's heritage against their future ambitions. This process led us to Affinia (derived from the Latin affinis for "akin to"). This lyrical name was the first win, moving the firm away from functional initials to a more approachable, client-relationship-driven identity.
The connectivity loop
The visual identity was born from the typography of the name itself. We spotted a human metaphor in the double 'i' of Affinia, which allowed us to create a bespoke "loop" character for the 'n'. This served as a visual hook representing the connection between the firm and its clients. To ground the brand in established prestige while maintaining a modern edge, we selected a ‘double-story’ lowercase 'a' in our winning wordmark, and a core typeface, Satoshi, which balanced classic legibility with a contemporary tech-forward feel.
Defining the palette
To ensure Affinia stood out against the "Sea of Blue" competitors, we explicitly targeted the white space in the market's colour landscape. We landed on a sophisticated yet bold trio: Forest Green, Action Orange, and Honeydew. This palette, supported by a photography style that focused on "human-in-the-moment" imagery of real business owners (bakers, mechanics, entrepreneurs), successfully ditched the stuffy clichés of staged office photography in favour of something authentic and relatable.
The digital-first brand portal
In a move away from static, outdated PDF guidelines, we implemented a custom-built, password-protected Brand Portal. This acted as a living ‘single source of truth’ for the firm’s 250+ employees. The portal housed everything from the "Action Orange" hex codes to an exhaustive library of 50+ curated Figma social media templates and a 40-slide master PowerPoint deck. This ensured that the internal IT and marketing teams were empowered to roll out the brand with total autonomy.
Phase 2 - the office
The project’s second phase focused on the physical manifestation of the brand. We developed templatable signage and a wayfinding system that could be adapted across Affinia’s growing real estate. Starting with their head office in Stratford, we implemented the "connectivity loop" as large-scale wall art and coordinated graphic treatments for lifts, entranceways, and digital displays. This provided a blueprint for their subsequent expansion, ensuring that every new office acquisition felt like a seamless part of the Affinia family from day one.
