Side Notes: Issue #1

Here’s what’s in the first edition:

→ Why you might already own your best content

→ What makes a brand last for years

→ A fix for messy feedback

→ When a one-page website is all you need

→ Why we’re retiring our free offer

Welcome to Side Notes, our new monthly update from the studio. Rather than anything salesy, we’d like to show you the work we’re proud of and share the odd useful thing along the way, so that when you next need a hand with a creative project, we’re a name you remember.

A big chunk of the last few weeks went into helping one of our most loyal clients look their best on a trade show floor. The stand was built around giant screens, and our focus was on making them tell a compelling story.

The thing that surprised us most? The best content was already sitting in the client’s archive. Existing footage, reframed and re-edited, told their current story better than anything we could have made from scratch. Sometimes the answer isn’t a blank canvas. It’s a good edit.

Designing for screens at that size is its own challenge, too. No sound, no voiceover. Just visuals and text that have to stop a stranger in about three seconds. Takes more planning than you’d think.

We wrote more about this one on LinkedIn

Something worth knowing if a rebrand is ever on your horizon: the brands that last are built as systems, not just logos.

Back in 2020 we rebranded Histologix, a specialist research lab in Nottingham. We kept what had real heritage and evolved the rest into a proper system: identity, exhibition graphics, stationery, social templates and a website, all joined up. It still holds its own against competitors in the life sciences space today, with no reinventing needed.

That’s the difference a system makes. Get the foundations right and a brand stretches to fit as you grow, rather than becoming a cost you revisit every couple of years.

Read the full case study on our News page

Feedback by email is where good projects get tangled: PDFs going back and forth, comments buried in subject lines, and nobody quite sure which version is the current one.

The fix we swear by is Ziflow, the online proofing platform we use for approvals. Instead of emailing files around, you view the artwork and comment directly on it. Feedback reaches us faster, revisions are clearer, and approvals move quicker. Less chasing, less confusion, more confidence that nothing’s been missed. If you’re stuck in the email-and-PDF cycle on your own projects, it’s well worth a look, whoever you end up using it with.

More on this in our News post

There’s a tendency to assume a website project means a full multi-page build with all the bells and whistles. Sometimes it does. But often a single, well-crafted page does an enormous amount of heavy lifting.

A one-pager is fast to build, simple to maintain, and easy for visitors to digest. For a new business, a product launch, or a service testing the water, it can be exactly the right tool: online and looking credible, without the cost and complexity of a full build. Think of it as a foundation. Get it right, learn what your audience responds to, then expand when the time and budget make sense.

Want to know when a one-page website might be the smarter choice? We’ve broken it down in a quick LinkedIn carousel.

A quick thought on choosing anyone creative: a free sample only ever shows you a corner of what they can do.

We’ve been living that one. For ten years we offered new clients a free presentation makeover, and while it built some brilliant relationships, out in the wider world it had quietly pigeon-holed us as “the presentation agency,” when our clients know we do far more. So we’ve decided to retire it. Rather than a quick freebie, we’d rather earn your trust by showing the actual work and being useful, which is part of what this newsletter is for. It’s a leap, but it’s the right one.

Read the full story on our News page

Thanks for reading.

Colin & the Omnia team