Earnest · Dave Batt
Earnest is a multi-award-winning, specialist B2B marketing agency based in London and New York.
Earnest is a creative marketing agency focused on delivering data-driven campaigns that blend strategic thinking with compelling design and content. Known for working across social media, paid advertising, branding, and web design, the agency helps businesses grow their online presence and engage their target audiences more effectively.
Their approach typically combines analytics with creative storytelling, allowing clients to build strong brand identities while achieving measurable results.
Client
Earnest Agency
Deliverables
Website Redesign
Brand Guides
Creative team
Steve Kreeger
David Gyertson
Pete Deane
Chris Holland
Dave Batt
The Challenge
Redesigning a website for an agency without any formal brand guides is challenging because there’s no clear foundation to guide creative or strategic decisions.
Without defined elements like typography, colours, tone of voice, every design choice becomes subjective. This makes it impossible to ensure consistency across other collateral or align stakeholders on a single direction.
This often leads to prolonged feedback cycles, conflicting opinions, and a risk of producing a site that feels disjointed or off-brand. It also complicates user experience decisions, since messaging and positioning aren’t clearly established, which can dilute the agency’s value proposition. Ultimately, the redesign process becomes less about execution and more about uncovering and defining the brand itself—effectively turning the project into both a branding and web design exercise at the same time.
My Role
I was hired by Earnest to help plan and design websites for several different client projects, but also to approach their own digital platform with a fresh pair of eyes. Having no previous association with their brand or any company material, the goal was to create an unbiased tone that would be supported by managers and stakeholders. This would establish a foundation of values that would help describe a more appropriate visual direction for the new site, and future marketing collateral.
Process
After a number of discussions with the CEO, Creative Director, and Head of Strategy, and Digital Lead, an overarching tone of voice for the agency was more formally defined.
The next step was to build a quick visual library of past collateral that had been produced for external comms. A closer look at previous client presentations, case studies, and social posts revealed a consistent (but rough) base of visual elements that could help reflect the agency’s core values.
From there, we created a strict style guide outlining typography, brand colours, image and illustration styles, and tone of voice. This in turn informed the component library to build out the required modules and pages for the new site.
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