Bath-based web agency Mud has launched a new website for Streathers Daynes Smith (SDS), a new North London law firm with local resonance, built around a new brand identity created by award-winning London branding agency SomeOne.
The new site went live in September alongside the launch of the new firm and its brand, and serves SDS’s four high street offices in Crouch End, Hampstead, Highgate and Islington.
Mud handled research and strategy, UX, prototyping, design, content strategy, content design, front-end development and Craft CMS development, and hosts the site.
You can see the new site at streathersdaynessmith.co.uk, read the full case study on Mud’s website, and see SomeOne’s side of the story in their In Your Corner project.
Marking the appointment of two new partners and a fresh departure from the original founder, SDS is a new firm rooted in its North London locality. SomeOne – the agency behind the London 2012 Olympic pictograms and brands for Eurostar and the Royal Opera House – developed the strategy and identity, centred on the line “In Your Corner”.
The idea is simple: City-level legal expertise, delivered from the high street by people who know the neighbourhoods they serve. The identity brings that to life through painterly, oil-painting-style artwork of SDS’s North London locale, a heritage-inspired colour palette, and handwritten-style type paired with a modern serif.
The brief made it clear the website needed to sidestep the corporate tropes common across the legal sector while still signalling the quality high-net-worth clients expect from the brands they use.
Mud’s answer was to “frame” SomeOne’s artwork, letting it do the heavy lifting within minimal, refined layouts that borrow from luxury brands. A subtle grid, sparing use of the brand’s more expressive elements, and scroll-based colour transitions from dark to light guide visitors through the site.
Short, plain-English copy and photography of the firm’s own people then help visitors reach the right specialist quickly, rather than putting a contact form between them and the firm’s solicitors.
Matt Powell, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Mud, said:
“Law firm websites have a habit of looking much the same, so it was a treat to work with a brand this distinctive. SomeOne gave SDS something with warmth and personality, and our job was to frame it properly, giving the artwork room to breathe, and making sure the quality comes through on every screen.”
With the September launch date already set in stone, the team had to get up to speed with the new brand quickly.
Ashley Quinn, Marketing & BD Manager at Streathers Daynes Smith, said:
“What made their work even more impressive was that they joined the project halfway through, giving them significantly less time than originally planned to get up to speed and deliver the end result. […] The final website is exactly what we hoped for: visually impressive, user-friendly and easy to manage. The Craft CMS backend has made updating the site incredibly straightforward, and the handover process was seamless.”
SomeOne were pleased with the result, too. Simon Manchipp, Founding Partner at SomeOne, said:
“I wanted to say how pleased we are with the way you have interpreted the branding for the new website. Seeing it alongside the old materials really highlights what a brilliant team can do and how fantastic your team are.”
Mud is a Bath-based web design and development agency, and one of the UK’s earliest Craft CMS Verified Partners. The team designs and builds websites for organisations across the UK, with services spanning digital strategy, UX, website design and development, and ongoing support and optimisation. Find out more at ournameismud.co.uk.
Bristol agency Fanatic has acquired Studio Kin, combining brand and creative expertise with established digital, technical and performance capability.
The move marks the next stage of growth for Fanatic and supports its ambition to build a more connected model for what an agency can be. Founded by partners Ian and Milly Collis-Smith in 2001, Fanatic has spent the past 25 years working across brand and digital. Today, it is a team of 32, with capabilities spanning creative, technology, search, marketing, data and performance.
The agency works locally, nationally and internationally in the hospitality, technology and environmental sectors, with brands including Benihana, Gordon Ramsay, Wessex Water, Truespeed
and British Solar Renewables.
Studio Kin brings further depth to the creative side of the business, particularly in brand strategy and identity. Founded by James Ratcliffe and Simon Day, Kin followed eight years spent building and leading Bristol agency Rhombus Studio to a team of 10. The senior-led studio built around the belief that the best brands are created through deep collaboration between teams and clients.
Studio Kin has focused heavily on purpose-led organisations and businesses looking to make a positive impact. The studio created the identity for Western Forest, the first new national forest in 30 years, helped evolve Bristol Beer Factory into the brand it is today and worked with Housing Matters, Caring in Bristol, Shelter and a range of other partners on the Renter’s Rights Campaign.
That shared belief in collaboration was a major part of what brought the two businesses together, with a clear opportunity to reconnect Fanatic with its design roots, bring its services closer together and give creativity a bigger role across the agency.
The ambition is to raise the creative bar across every touchpoint, so wherever someone experiences a client’s brand, from a website to an email, a social post or a campaign, it feels beautifully designed, unmistakably on brand and emotionally engaging.
By bringing teams closer together and building deeper relationships with the businesses they work with, Fanatic can look at challenges from different perspectives, find better answers and create new opportunities for growth.
Fanatic and Kin worked together on We Back Bristol, the city-wide giving movement co-founded with Bristol Beer Factory, Team Love, Pony Group and Bianchis to help charities and grassroots
organisations thrive.
Kin led the brand and creative direction, while Fanatic brought the digital and technical expertise to build an experience that combined strong UX with an engaging visual identity. It offered an early glimpse of what the combined team could achieve.
“What excited us about Fanatic was never just the breadth of what it can do. It was how connected everything could be. A great brand is more valuable when the website, UX, search and marketing around it are all working with it. And all of that becomes more valuable again when you know the client’s business well enough to understand what they actually need. That’s where the real opportunity is.”
James Ratcliffe, Creative Director
The move strengthens Fanatic’s creative offer while supporting its wider growth plans, connecting brand and creative thinking more closely with its established digital, technical and performance
expertise.
“The best client relationships we have are the ones where we become integral to the business. We understand what they’re trying to achieve, we know the challenges and we’re trusted to say what we think will make the biggest difference. Bringing Kin into Fanatic gives us even more expertise to put behind those relationships. For me, that’s what Agency 4.0 is about. Not selling more services, but connecting the right people around the problem and helping the
client perform better.”
Ian, Director
The combined team will operate as Fanatic, with James Ratcliffe and Simon Day joining the agency’s senior leadership as Creative Director and Client Director respectively. The acquisition forms part of Fanatic’s wider growth plans, while retaining the close client relationships, specialist expertise and collaborative culture on which the business has been built.
About Fanatic
Fanatic is an independent Bristol agency built around the idea that great work happens when creative, digital, technology and performance are connected. Founded in 2001 by Ian and Milly Collis-Smith, the 32-strong team works with ambitious brands locally, nationally and internationally, including Hawksmoor, Gordon Ramsay, Artfarm and Benihana. Fanatic combines specialist expertise with close client relationships to help businesses solve problems, find opportunities and grow.
About Studio Kin
Studio Kin was founded by James Ratcliffe and Simon Day as a senior-led brand and creative studio, built on the belief that the best brands are created through deep collaboration. Its work has focused
on purpose-led organisations and businesses looking to make a positive impact, including Western Forest, Bristol Beer Factory, Housing Matters, Caring in Bristol and the Renter’s Rights Campaign. Kin now joins Fanatic to bring greater brand and creative depth across the agency.
Bath creative web design agency Mud has won three international awards for the brand and website it created for Bristol-based tensile fabric engineers Base Structures, putting a South West partnership on a global stage.
See the full project in Mud’s Base Structures case study, or visit the live site.
Base designs, engineers and rigs tensile fabric structures, from canopies and facades to enclosures and one-off installations. Its work features at Lord’s Cricket Ground, the Science Museum and RAID Museum Denmark, and it works alongside practices including Zaha Hadid Architects.
Since launching earlier this year, the project has won:
Web Excellence Award, Architecture category. The global programme judges entries on innovation, usability, content and user experience, visual design, and technical performance.
Silver, Creativepool Annual, Web category. Judging combines an industry panel with a People’s Choice vote, and winners feature in the Annual, which goes to agencies and brand leaders worldwide.
Silver, W3 Awards, General Websites – Architecture & Design category. The W3s are judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, an invitation-only body of senior figures from organisations including Wired, Disney and Condé Nast.
Matt Powell, Founder & Creative Director at Mud, says:
“I’m really proud of this project. And it’s fantastic for the client and our team to get the recognition they deserve for it. Working on a brand alongside the website is always our favourite kind of project, as everything can cascade from a single idea. I think you can feel that in the Base website.
“Of course, it’s always easier to work with an ambitious and impressive brand like Base Structures. Winning three awards is the cherry on top.”
Base first came to Mud for a new website. Early discovery work made it clear that the brand needed to catch up with the company’s ambitions, so the project started there.
Jacob Little, Marketing & PR Consultant at Base Structures, says:
“Mud brought an understanding from the outset that this project was more than just building a new website. The team responded to the brief with proactive, strategic ideas that balanced creativity with the need to evolve our positioning in a way that felt authentic to the business.
There was a real sense of friendly collaboration throughout — ideas flowed naturally, and the whole process felt open, constructive, and enjoyable.”
The brand idea, “tension builds”, came from the forces at the heart of tensile fabric engineering: the tension in the rigging, the balance between creative ideas and technical precision, and the suspense as a large-scale structure is finally realised. That push-pull runs through the website, where linear elements warp, stretch and bounce as visitors scroll.
Behind the scenes, a Craft CMS platform lets the Base team tell the stories of their most iconic projects. It also holds an archive of more than 150 past projects, hidden from public view but available to the sales team when they’re pitching.
We all know motion graphics are a highly effective form of communication and at P+S we’ve been shouting about this for a while. But handled badly, video content can end up muddling your brand and confusing your customers. Luckily, there’s a simple trick to getting it right: motion graphics guidelines.
We’ll get to them in a minute but first, let’s do a quick refresher on why video is something you should really embrace for your business.
Video continues to be one of the fastest growing methods of communication. And with 96% of people turning to video to learn more about a product or a service it’s pretty hard not to agree that it should be part of your business strategy.
Not sure of the benefits? Here’s your at-a-glance guide:
Well, all the above sounds great, right? However, even though the benefits of motion graphics are well established, decision makers will still often turn down video projects. Let’s look at why.
A recent report found that 19% of people lack the time, 10% of people don’t know where to start and 24% of people feel video is too expensive.
This is understandable. Creating a video can be a lengthy process. (Have you ever looked over the shoulder of an animator doing their thing? It’s a snore fest.) And you know, time equals money. Truly great creative comes at a cost but, at the time of writing, AI tools haven’t evolved to a place where they can churn out stunning, effective and on-brand motion graphics at the click of a button. Probably next week though, amiright?
As for knowing where to start, this becomes a big issue without real guidance in place onhow to communicate your brand. A lack of clear vision around your motion output ultimately creates a lack of consistency and can reduce your brand integrity. Think about it… creating unique, different interpretations of your brand for every video is like starting from scratch every time. You wouldn’t ask 10 different designers to create social posts without brand guidelines, one of them will probably select comic sans and word art to work up their masterpiece!
OK, so those are some pretty hefty considerations. What’s the solution? We gave this away at the top, but you guessed it! Brand motion guidelines. Up until now, they’ve been something of an afterthought, the final page in a brand guidelines PDF that talks about using 1080p and brand compliant subtitles, but it’s so much more than that now.
Motion is embedded across every touchpoint of your brand
It’s everywhere from logo animations to transitions, text animations, graphic language, social templates and even in the minute detail of how UI bits animate. If you want to create a wide array of video assets, guidelines form the robust design system that streamlines the whole process and ensures a strong brand presence.
To keep track, you need guidelines that:
As our collective attention span gets shorter, it’s vital that your visual communication looks and feels instantly recognisable, even in a few seconds. Think about how you feel when you see an Apple ad or your favourite football team walking on to the pitch: you may not know what’s about to happen but your brain will link together past experiences with that brand/team by association, informing how you feel and how excited you are for what comes next.
Motion guidelines are essentially a kit of parts, and they shift depending on your brand and what you want to achieve. But as a rough guide those parts include:
Once guidelines have been worked up and agreed, you can roll them out to private or public-facing online digital guidelines which display all the best practice for each element, along with updatable templates (that we call ‘video toolkits’) for designers to use – having one source of truth for all things motion. And we’ve created a little animated explainer that breaks down what a P+S video toolkit is.
The EAA is reshaping expectations for how digital content including video is produced and delivered. While compliance is a legal requirement across the EU, it’s also fast becoming a marker of brand credibility and modern practice worldwide.
Ensuring your video content is accessible (with captions, audio descriptions, and inclusive design) not only future-proofs your output but demonstrates a genuine commitment to reaching, and respecting, all audiences. In a global market that values inclusion, accessibility isn’t just about regulation, it’s about reputation.
One of the best ways to improve your compliance is through your motion guidelines. By having one central store of rules, templates and toolkits you can make sure future content will always be in line with EAA requirements.
If you fancy finding out more about how video could work for your brand, or need some help putting together your own guidelines, then drop us a line at [email protected].
Creative web design agency Mud has launched a new website for The HR Dept, giving the national consultancy a clearer, more confident digital experience and cutting 95% of its pages in the process, with no loss in organic performance.
The HR Dept is a national HR consultancy operating through a local franchise model. Its website had grown tired and, page by page, more confusing. For a brand built on trust – and one that people often contact at moments of urgency – that was a problem.
Behind the scenes, the complexity couldn’t be ignored either. A national franchise network and thousands of existing pages meant any change had to improve the experience without disrupting visibility or performance.
The ambition was simple but significant: create a more polished, intuitive experience that made it easier for people to find the right support.
Sam Pardey at The HR Dept said:
“We turned to Mud when looking to rebuild our existing website and freshen up our brand. From the first meeting with Matt through to the website launch and beyond, they have been responsive and helpful, providing expert guidance and a keen eye for detail.”
The HR Dept wanted users to feel that help was at their fingertips. Mud restructured the site to guide people more naturally through it and developed a refreshed visual language that emphasised professionalism while holding on to the local feeling that matters so much to the franchise model.
Every decision was made with usability in mind: simplifying journeys, reducing friction, and making sure the experience felt purposeful and easy to navigate.
Matt Powell, Creative Director at Mud, said:
“When someone lands on an HR consultancy’s website, they’re usually there because something has gone wrong. That’s not the moment to make them hunt for an answer.
“So the work wasn’t about adding; it was about taking away. A high-end visual identity that signals professionalism, a structure that gets people to the right local team quickly, and nothing to slow them down.”
The work ran from research and strategy through information architecture, UX design, responsive design and Craft CMS development, with Mud also handling hosting.
The scale of the existing estate was the central technical challenge. Thousands of pages across a national franchise network had to be consolidated into a structure that worked nationally and locally at the same time, without surrendering the SEO equity built up over years.
The site is powered by Craft CMS, giving the team the flexibility to manage content across the network as it grows.
A 95% reduction in pages, with no impact on organic SEO performance. And in the first month after launch, a 30% increase in AI citations — a growing signal of visibility as more people start their search for support in an AI assistant rather than a search engine.
Sam Pardey said:
“We were delighted with the result: a modern, easy to navigate and eye-catching multi-location website that works for our brand both nationally and locally. We were so happy with the service, we are using them to build an additional website for our sister brand. It has been a pleasure working with Mud and we look forward to the partnership continuing.”
A few days ago, MOYA Studio was named Creative Startup of the Year for the South West at the UK StartUp Awards 2026. Now we are heading to the national finals in September, representing the South West region. We’re still a little stunned, honestly.
But the award isn’t really where this story starts. It starts with a bag. And a lot of frustration.
When I launched my own handbag brand back in 2022, I hit a wall that nobody in the industry talked about openly. The fashion manufacturing world simply isn’t built for startups. Designers raise their fees and limit iterations the moment they hear the word “Startup”. Manufacturers want minimum orders we can’t meet. The worst is that nobody in this process supports the experimental, trial-and-error mentality that startup founders have. And if our idea is genuinely new, which the best ones always are, there’s no roadmap to follow.
Through my work as a freelance bag designer, I saw the same problem happening repeatedly. A founder is often stuck in no man’s land, caught between a designer who didn’t understand production and a manufacturer who couldn’t see the vision. I realised how broken the process was.
So I built the thing I wished had existed.
MOYA Studio is an end-to-end design and development consultancy for bag and accessory startups. Not a design agency. Not a sourcing agent. One partner who holds the whole picture, from a rough concept through design, prototyping, sourcing and into manufacturing – until the founder receives the products at their doorstep. The creative vision and the commercial reality, kept in the same room throughout.
In just one year, our studio has supported 20 founders across the US, Europe and beyond. Products that are genuinely new, from modern motherhood bags, patent-pending smart bags to pet carriers or sustainable accessories, built by people who are close to real problems and brave enough to do something about them.
The award is a wonderful thing. But if we’re honest, it belongs as much to those founders as it does to us. The ones who trusted us with their idea at the earliest, most vulnerable stage. That kind of courage deserves the right support. We’re just glad we get to be that.
MOYA Studio is Bristol-based. We’re heading to the national finals in September.
Come say hello at www.moyabagstudio.com
Most AI-generated brand messaging reads like marketing copy trained on even more marketing copy. But it doesn’t have to be like that. Here’s how the best marketing and creative teams are using AI to develop pin-sharp positioning and whip-smart brand lines.
Confidence gap
Many of us now use AI in some form. Blog content, social copy, summaries, captions and campaign variations can be created quickly, often with surprisingly competent results. So far, so good. But when the stakes rise – positioning, campaign messaging, brand voice or strategic narrative comes into play – confidence in AI tends to disappear. And we all know why. AI-generated messaging often sounds polished but generic. Strategically thin. The kind of copy that ticks boxes while saying very little. For organisations that care deeply about reputation and positioning (i.e. the global success stories), that’s a problem. Obviously.
The assumption is that AI simply can’t produce high-level brand language. Strategic messaging still belongs entirely to human writers. But increasingly, that assumption feels shaky. Because the real shift is not that AI is replacing writing. It is that writing itself is changing.
The problem with most AI prompts
Most teams are still using AI as an output machine. A prompt goes in, some copy comes back out and everyone hopes for the best. Which is usually how you end up with campaign lines that sound like they were assembled in a corporate escape room. The problem is not the technology itself. It’s the lack of context, direction and strategic thinking surrounding it. Today, a typical AI prompt for a campaign line or a piece of brand messaging might look something like this (and, to be fair, most of us are now using more detailed prompts, but let’s use the following for illustrative purposes):“Write a catchy slogan for a leadership programme. Make it inspiring, memorable and engaging. Keep it short and dynamic. See attached our brand voice guidelines for guidance on tone. Use wordplay if appropriate.”
Good luck with that.
Strong strategic messaging has never worked like this. Before AI, nobody expected a creative agency to develop distinctive positioning from a two-line brief and a vague adjective like “dynamic”. The same principle applies here. Better inputs create better thinking. The marketing teams getting real value from AI are feeding it considerably more context. Brand background. Audience insight. Internal tensions. Tone of voice examples. Competitive positioning. Personas. Even references to sentence rhythm, pacing and emotional tone. The strongest prompts increasingly resemble strategic creative briefs rather than instructions. Because that’s where things start getting genuinely good.
Writing using AI
The most effective teams are not using AI to write for them. They are writing using AI. And it’s an important point to note.
Using AI to write usually produces generic work because the model defaults towards probability. It selects the most statistically likely phrasing, which is why so much AI-generated marketing language converges around the same structures, clichés and predictable turns of phrase. The result is polished, technically competent copy that sounds just like everything else. Writing using AI is different. It becomes a collaborative process built around refinement, challenge and iteration. Ideas are tested. Routes are pushed further. Language is tightened. And messaging evolves through a conversation rather than appearing fully formed after a single prompt.
It’s worth bearing in mind that, the strongest results rarely emerge in the first couple of hours. They develop gradually as teams refine the thinking, sharpen the tone and articulate what feels right – and what doesn’t. That process requires more human judgement, not less.
Why feedback quality matters
One of the biggest shifts AI introduces to the writing process is the importance of articulate feedback. The organisations seeing the strongest messaging results are often the ones capable of explaining nuance clearly. Not: “This doesn’t work. Try again.” But: “The tone here feels abrupt and slightly curt. It needs to have pace, but with warmer, more approachable language.” Or: “The sentiment here is fine, but we need to add some flair to the language. Try some repetition. Use the power of three in a sentence to add impact and tone.” This kind of feedback gives the model something it can work with.
In practice, the process starts to feel far more like a creative conversation than a transaction. A campaign line will probably be tested, rejected, rewritten and refined 50 times. Messaging becomes something that’s shaped collaboratively in real time. Which means that strategic brand messaging still depends heavily on craft. AI can process language at warp speed, but it still struggles with judgement, subtlety and implication. The writer’s sensitivity to tone, nuance and audience psychology remains hugely important. (Arguably, more important than before.)
Why most brand voice guidelines fail in AI
Brand voice is where many organisations start running into problems. And, to be honest, we’re also yet to learn how to stop AI from going off-piste with brand voice, but a big part of the problem is caused by feeding conventional tone of voice guidelines into the LLM. Most existing tone of voice guidelines were written for humans. And human writers are good at interpreting nuance. Give an experienced copywriter a handful of brand traits – confident, intelligent, approachable, authoritative – and they understand how to balance those qualities.
AI tends to interpret them much more literally/weirdly. The language often becomes an awkward blend of stated characteristics rather than a genuinely coherent voice. The organisations getting this right use AI-specific brand voice guidelines. (And the smartest organisations ask SIM7 to create this for them, by the way.) These will include detailed, extensive examples of the brand voice in action, which are far more helpful for an LLM.
It’s still about craft
There is a temptation to frame AI as either a creative revolution or a creative disaster. But the reality? It’s somewhere in the middle. AI is exceptionally good at accelerating parts of the writing process. It can help teams explore more routes, test more language and develop messaging frameworks more efficiently than before. But strategic brand messaging still requires judgement, restraint and clarity of thinking. Human thinking.
The marketing teams getting the most value from AI are not using it to avoid the work. They are using it to go deeper into it. Which means staying ‘inside the conversation’, refining continuously, challenging the language harder. And giving much, much richer feedback.
Basically, they use AI to sharpen strategic thinking rather than shortcut it. And that’s probably the most important shift of all. In future, the advantage will not belong to the organisations producing the most content. It will belong to the organisations that know how to shape language with greater clarity, precision and intent.
Because strategic messaging was never just about output.
It was always about craft.
SIM7 is a creative consultancy that builds standout brands from the words up. We shape voices, sharpen messages, and design brands and campaigns that your team can confidently take forward. Award-winning, human-led creative – with AI woven into the process.
Creative web design agency Mud has launched a new brand and website for Base Structures, capturing the bold technical ambition of the team and the extraordinary complexity of their projects.
Base Structures came to Mud for a new website, but the initial groundwork revealed a bolder, more ambitious brand needed to take shape before any digital design thinking could begin.
Base is a market leader in tensile fabric structures. Self-described problem-solvers, their creative rigging and tensile fabric expertise delivers one-of-a-kind, immersive structures, canopies and large-scale installations.
Their work has transformed spaces for a high-profile client roster, including Zaha Hadid Architects, the Science Museum, RAID Museum Denmark and Lord’s Cricket Ground.
The existing website served as a functional catalogue of their projects to date, but told none of the story when it came to the transformative effect of their work. To attract higher-profile, design-motivated audiences seeking bespoke solutions, Base needed a stronger brand and presence that captured their extraordinary edge.
Jacob Little, Marketing & PR Consultant at Base Structures, said:
“Mud brought an understanding from the outset that this project was more than just building a new website. The team responded to the brief with proactive, strategic ideas that balanced creativity with the need to evolve our positioning in a way that felt authentic to the business. They arrived full of ideas and successfully captured the balance between our creative ambition and showcasing the technical delivery of often complex work.”
In early discussions with the Base team, Mud felt the opposing forces at play: the tension in the rigging of tensile fabric structures themselves, but also in the process of design and engineering, where creative ideas needed to be balanced with technical precision. The idea that ‘tension builds’ acknowledged the specialist expertise that Base Structures owns in the built environment sector.
Matt Powell, Creative Director at Mud, said:
“Engineering, manufacturing and rigging at height — in the discovery phase, we were struck by the sheer nerve and creative ambition alive in the Base team. When a client has a brand pillar of ‘experts in extraordinary’, you know it’s going to be a lot of fun.
“The idea that ‘tension builds’ — found in the force that defines tensile fabric engineering, and in the moments of suspense as their large-scale structures are realised — became the core theme in their new visual identity. It captures what sets them apart from typical architectural responses: the interplay between dynamic forms and forces.”
Mud evolved the original brand colours to be digital-first, expanding the palette with bright accents of blue and electric purple. The gothic sans serif PP Mori typeface was chosen for its subtle character, balancing a modern, functional feel with unexpected details.
Linear graphic elements respond to user behaviour throughout the site, with lines that warp, stretch and bounce in response to scrolling — bringing the feeling of tension directly into the digital experience. Subtle zoom mechanics draw users progressively into the work, emulating the immersive experience of Base structures themselves.
Alongside the visual experience, Mud built a flexible content system to support Base’s growth. A functional blog gives the team a platform to showcase projects and share expert insights, while an archive of 150+ historical projects (hidden from end users but accessible to the sales team) preserves the depth of their back catalogue. The whole system is powered by Craft CMS, giving Base the ability to update content as new projects and service lines develop.
The result is a bold, confident brand identity that feels true to the team spirit, and a digital experience that goes big on impact — inviting their audiences to marvel at the scale and artistic ambition of Base Structures’ hero projects.
Matt Powell said,
“This project was a perfect example of client/agency collaboration. The result is a platform with a big, visual impact that captures just what the Base team are capable of. We’re confident it will be transformative for Base, showcasing their work to assist them in landing even more technically ambitious projects at the intersection of art and architecture.”
Arnolfini has announced a new strategic partnership with Bristol-based creative agency Fiasco, marking an ambitious new chapter for one of the UK’s leading institutions for contemporary arts.
The partnership comes at a pivotal time as Arnolfini embarks on a major transformation programme designed to strengthen its cultural impact and future growth ambitions.
The organisation has delivered a series of significant strategic and commercial milestones over the past year, including new hospitality partnerships, digital transformation initiatives, and sustainability improvements.
Fiasco’s appointment marks an important step in communicating Arnolfini’s renewed vision and strengthening its distinct position within Bristol’s and the UK’s contemporary arts landscape.
Known for its distinctive work across the cultural and creative sectors, Fiasco will develop a new visual identity for the iconic cultural institution. The identity will reflect Arnolfini’s ambitions to become more open, visible and connected to wider audiences, while celebrating the diversity and creativity of Bristol’s cultural scene.
Alongside a new visual identity, Arnolfini is preparing to launch a new membership scheme, develop a new website and ticketing platform, and reimagine key public spaces within the building ahead of hosting the British Art Show in 2027: the UK’s largest touring exhibition of contemporary visual art.
The partnership comes at a landmark moment for Arnolfini, as the organisation marks 50 years in its iconic harbourside home, Bush House, while looking ahead to its next phase of development. Membership growth and the delivery of more connected experiences across every touchpoint will be a key future focus.
Neil Commander, Chief Commercial Officer at Arnolfini: “Partnering with Fiasco marks an important moment in Arnolfini’s evolution as we shape the next chapter for the organisation and reaffirm our role within Bristol’s dynamic cultural landscape. From the outset, Ben and the team demonstrated a deep understanding not only of Arnolfini’s heritage and purpose, but of our place within the city’s wider creative ecology.
This work goes far beyond developing a new visual identity. It is about articulating who we are and where we are heading – strengthening connections with audiences locally and internationally, increasing visibility and access, and ensuring every experience of Arnolfini reflects the ambition, openness and relevance of our creative programme.
This partnership reflects our belief in the power of creativity and collaboration to drive cultural impact and represents an important step in building a more connected, resilient and future-focused Arnolfini.”
The appointment also marks a significant milestone for Fiasco. Co-founders Ben Steers and Jason Smith launched the agency from an incubator space in Bush House in 2010, making the opportunity to work with Arnolfini a notable full-circle moment.
Ben Steers, Co-founder & Executive Creative Director: “Arnolfini has always been a special place for us. Long before we started the agency, it was a space that made creative ambition feel possible — somewhere that connected us to a wider creative community and shaped our understanding of what culture and creativity could do.
To now partner with Arnolfini at such a pivotal moment in its evolution feels incredibly meaningful. It’s a cultural icon in Bristol, and one on the cusp of an exciting new chapter. There’s a natural alignment between our shared ambition, our belief in the power of creativity, and our deep connection to the city where this journey began for us. It’s a real privilege to be part of what comes next.”
As Bristol continues to evolve as one of the UK’s key creative hubs, this partnership offers an exciting opportunity to help shape a more visible, inclusive and connected future for the city’s cultural landscape.
Fiasco is a brand and digital agency blending strategy and creative craft to move businesses forward with feeling. Past clients include renowned cultural institutions such as Nederlander Theatres, National Trust, Channel 4, Good Energy, Pinewood and Vertical.
fiasco.design
Founded in 1961, Arnolfini is Bristol’s international centre for contemporary arts, presenting an ambitious programme of visual art, performance, dance, film and music. A pioneering public space for arts and learning, Arnolfini is committed to offering innovative, inclusive and engaging experiences for all.
arnolfini.org.uk
Nearly every service-led business we’ve spoken to recently is struggling to get enquiries and win new clients. Founders, growing businesses, established ones – it doesn’t matter. You may find it reassuring to know that you aren’t alone, but that doesn’t help you sort the issue.
But why now?
The last few years have forced businesses to adapt – and fast! Most are still playing catch-up. But 2026 is still different…
The landscape has completely shifted, and businesses that have figured out how to adapt tend to be the larger ones with huge budgets, teams and data sets. Smaller businesses are still feeling their way in the dark.
If that’s where you are, here are five reasons your enquiries may have gone quiet, and what to do about each one.
If you know what SEO is, you might have heard how it’s changed since the introduction of AI. There still isn’t a unanimous view on how SEO and AI results fit together, but what we’ve seen with our clients is that strong SEO fundamentals still drive visibility in both Google search results and AI-generated summaries and chats. The easiest win comes from getting your keywords right and making sure they match what people are actually searching for. Start by using tools like Google Ads Keyword Planner, Neil Patel’s SEO tools, or Answer the Public to find real search terms that make sense for your business. Look for high-volume and low-competition word combos, as well as a few medium-competition, high-volume. Never forget long-tail phrases that use your keywords, as this is what AI loves. FAQs are your best friend here, you can write phrases exactly as potential clients might search in AI, then answer with authority.
Once you’ve got all that, place those terms where they naturally belong: page titles, headings, meta descriptions, service pages, blog content, and LinkedIn profile copy where relevant.
As markets shift, client habits change. What people want and how they engage with marketing is different. People have shorter attention spans, and can see through obvious sales ploys. If you don’t explain how you can improve their lives quickly, concisely and clearly, they are much quicker to click off and look elsewhere. And it’s not just that your audience’s receptiveness to certain types of marketing has shifted – a lot of the businesses we talk to never got their targeting right in the first place. And it’s not their fault! Being so close to the business, especially founders who’ve lived with their business from conception, you end up making a lot of assumptions, or don’t re-evaluate often enough. So if your enquiries have dried up, this could be a crucial area to tackle, even if just to know you’ve got it right.
Another very common issue we see with our clients: they don’t invest in understanding where they are on the playing field. If you’re not keeping up with who your competitors are, how they’re approaching your audience, and then differentiating yourself to make sure you stand out, then you are likely falling behind. And the markets are more saturated than ever – there are so many brands to choose from. If you don’t immediately look more appealing than others, you get overlooked. New competitors are popping up left, right and centre – especially with the advances AI have made possible. A lot of businesses deprioritise brand positioning, focusing on improving operational efficiencies, or pumping cash into sales and quick-win performance marketing. But if you don’t address your positioning, nothing will bring in stable returns, long term. You need to clearly stand out. If you aren’t clear on how you stand out – get clear on it, quick!
There was a time when a tempting discount was all you needed to get ahead. But that world doesn’t exist anymore. In saturated markets, what matters is whether your target audience trusts you, and this trust relies on many things. The best and quickest way to give trust signals is to surface your social proof front and centre. Put short testimonials near calls to action, list the best companies you’ve worked with, high up your website homepage, talk about key case studies that do the things you want to be known for in your marketing. Include qualitative results where possible, not just client feelings. Combine this with a strong brand that shows up consistently across all channels over time, and you’ve given your audience multiple touch-points to get to know you, like what they’re seeing, and ‘BAM’ – people are ready to click your ‘enquire’ button.
This might just be the easiest one to fix quickly. No matter where your target audience engages with you, you need to remove any friction that’s stopping them from getting in touch. Your audience are busy people, saturated by information more than any time in history. If you do anything to slow someone’s decision to enquire now, you’re losing potential clients. What are the sins of mental friction? You don’t quickly and clearly answer all their worries about using your service, they don’t immediately understand what you do, they can’t easily find the ‘Talk to us now’ button, or you’re not giving them enough reasons to get excited. If you’ve already sorted all of the other issues above, this point alone could be the main reason your enquiry rate is stagnant or dropping. Make the paths to enquiry as short, easy and frictionless as possible, no matter the channel.
The landscape is different now. If you’re not keeping up and adapting then you will struggle – we know, because we see it all the time. It’s why we designed The Read. In 5 working days, we give businesses a report that tells them why people aren’t enquiring with key actions to fix that. It costs £295, and if we can’t work out what’s wrong, you get your money back. You can take on the actions yourself, or ask us to help you – either way is fine.
The Read has been described as inspiring ‘Lightbulb moments’, and our advice ‘far exceeded expectations!’. We’ve given service-led businesses ‘real, actionable clarity about [their] business and what needs to change’.
If you’re feeling lost and want some expert direction, visit www.milstedandstrange.com/the-read, otherwise, good luck with the rest of 2026, and hopefully our advice does its small part of helping you through the rest of it!
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