When we set up Seventh Wave Corporate Design, it took us long enough to come up with the name of the organisation. We struggled with this for a long time and rejected many names for being too complicated, too obvious, too dull, too meaningless and too already done. Perhaps we should have studied FI Mercedes’ Tito Wolf whose first company was called March 15 after the day it was founded! Anyway, we didn’t, and chose instead a name based on the mystical power of the number seven, allied to the fact that the seventh wave is the most powerful in the series of rollers which hit the average beach. It seemed to reflect the value we placed on the company we had founded and what it would represent.

Having said that, it’s all very well having a name but we knew that we needed a brand, a design, a logo and a website and more. Now there is a school of thought which says that these days anything is possible in respect of these and, especially during 2020, I have met a lot of worthy individuals who have turned their hand to these skilled pursuits and come up with some variable results. However, my fellow director and I would as little sign up to these as we would take up bungee jumping or car mechanics; you have to know your limits!

To that end, we took our name, ideas and content to the team at Purple Banana Creative Design to see what they could do, back in 2019, with a key directive being that we were operating in the corporate world, with high-end values and high-end customers, but that we also wanted visitors to the website to find it welcoming, eye-catching and exhibiting a wow factor missing from the opposition. What we received was perhaps all of those things and more, and I’m assuming by now that you might have found the website to check out what I’m going to write! 

I think if you consider the sea notion which leaps from the home page, that is perhaps central to the initial attraction, with the vastness of the oceans, their untold depths and the mysterious power of the waves, all looming large, with the live action capturing the turbulence and flux of the sea. For me this represents the scale and power of what we are trying do at Seventh Wave. In fact, the design is quite mesmeric as the water cascades over the rocks below from the helicopter view. The design and colour scheme all take their lead from there with the palette of white and shades of blue hosting the rest of the website, along with powerful black and white photography and a range of original and though-provoking graphics. It’s a string combination. 

Whenever I refer people to the website, they always come back to us with praise for not just the content, but also the design and flow of everything.

The logo, again, has the combination of style and meaning it its original, iconic form, but can also be adapted for a range of other designs, sizes and uses, but for us the simple combination of the ‘W’ and the ‘7’ is what makes it work. Believe me we worked through quite a lot of variations before we settled on this one. We also settled on Futura for the font for all our work which again has an element of professionalism and reliability so was carefully chosen for both the website but also for training materials, flyers and business cards. The first of these is also reliant on the oceanic imagery and makes for a powerful effect at training on both booklets and powerpoint.

Whenever I refer people to the website, they always come back to us with praise for not just the content, but also the design and flow of everything, which shows that our brand is what begins the process of engaging with our customers. We look forward to sharing that message with more of our customers around the world this year.

You can view our finished website at www.seventhwavetraining.co.uk