MyCake is a boutique financial benchmarking company which offers data-driven insights and advice to third sector organisations. Sarah, the founder, approached me to do a full brand review, to clarify the way they talk about what they do, to redesign her company’s identity, and to design and build them a new website.

The company had started out giving financial advice to small creative businesses, but had gradually evolved to work with larger organisations in the charity sector, offering financial benchmarking. My task was to create an identity and website that reflected this new offer and audience, while still holding true to the company’s origins.

MyCake cuts through the layers of financial information that make up businesses, and then offers those layers of information (and the insights derived from them) to their clients. So I created a logo which suggests layered information – a cake, but an abstracted one, the information version of a cake (with a subtle nod to a pie-chart). I paired the logo with elegant sans serif lettering for the company name, with a classic serif typeface for the rest of the identity.

After discussions with Sarah, we decided to build the site on the Squarespace platform. That kept costs low, provided responsive layouts that worked as well on mobile devices as on desktop, and a back-end that was easy for Sarah and her colleagues to use. It also offered a handy mailing list function.

As the site was being designed and built in a time of lockdowns and social distancing, when the MyCake team couldn’t get together for a staff photo, I suggested a creative solution:

That feathered theme continues with the photographic background to the newsletter, which features parakeet feathers collected by Sarah on her daily walks.

MyCake also has a data crunching website for its clients, Prime Numbers. I designed a new identity for this too, noticing that the word had two prime numbers secreted within it.

“Alistair’s ability to cut through the noise to the essence of the brand has been invaluable in reshaping the image of our fifteen year old company. We needed to develop our image, via our web presence, into something more professional and grown up – appealing to a client base of government departments, local authorities and grant funders. The resulting site combines professionalism, our innovative approach to data analytics, and just a dash of humour. Alistair’s skill in storytelling – helping us identify the key messages for our current clients, whilst winnowing out the messages we no longer needed – is reaping rewards for the business, and helping us break into new markets.”
Sarah Thelwall · Director / Founder of MyCake