Brighton Chamber's new brand

I’m Bee, operations manager at Brighton Chamber. One of my jobs at the Chamber is to lead our projects – whether that be funded projects such as the Living Wage campaign, or business support such as Catch the Wave.

In my interview for this role back in 2017, Sarah (our CEO) excitedly told me how the Chamber was looking to imminently rebrand and build a new website. I was pleased to be able to show off about my time working agency side in web design and digital marketing and it seemed like the perfect project for me to get stuck into as a newbie in the team. Fast forward a year and eight months (apparently the definition of ‘imminent’ is not what I thought it was) and here we are – ready to launch – all thanks to the many hours of hard work from the Chamber team, members helping out and of course the amazing designers and developers who have made this happen.

It’s been a long and emotional journey but-

Enough with the waffle, show us the new logo!

OK, OK! Here goes. Drum roll please …

Designed by REBORN, the new brand is fresh and modern, fit for the organisation we are today. The identity of Brighton Chamber is special – because Brighton itself is special – and we wanted our brand to reflect that. REBORN worked closely with us to explore what we needed from the rebrand, and we called on Sam Knowles from Insight Agents to workshop all the many aspects of the Chamber and tease out the key stories we needed to tell. We, the client, were involved at every stage – feeding into the early concepts, colour palettes and the on-going evolution of the design.

Andrew Thomas, director at REBORN, said: "The time was right for a rebrand for Brighton Chamber. The public facing image needed to be aligned with the energy and enthusiasm of the Chamber culture. Typographically, we went for something friendly and sophisticated. Brighton Chamber is a professional organisation but it’s also warm and vibrant, so the colour palette is fun but the monogram logo is more serious to reflect the nature of their work."

Hey wait a second, what happened to Hove?

Well spotted. We are still, and have always been, Brighton & Hove Chamber of Commerce but conversationally our members rarely use our full name. Brighton Chamber (a more palatable four syllables) is how most people refer to us, so we’ve officially adopted it. Hove is still very much part of our remit and we’ll continue our work with the many Hove businesses and venues just the same as before. Basically, Hove, please don’t take it personally! We stretch out to Shoreham, Newhaven, Horsham and beyond.

And the website?

Our new website is set to launch on 1 July and we can’t wait!

Madison Web Solutions and REBORN have collaborated to deliver a beautiful, functional and slick new website which not only looks great but provides effective new services for members and practical solutions for the team behind the scenes. Richard Howard at Madison solutions has worked tirelessly to build a specification that is well and truly kitted out, and Joel and Markus in the design team picked up Andrew’s brand direction and rolled it out across the site. Judy Yorke from The Sentence Works has done an incredible job of crafting our website copy – she used words like ‘joyful’, ‘stimulating’ and ‘respected’ which makes us feel rather flattered.

Check out this blog to find out about the new services and features you can expect from the new site. The big switch over is from 1 July. Meanwhile, you can let us know what you think and do give me a shout if you have any questions.

See you on the other side!

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk