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About
(Est. 1996) “McMillan is a creative B2B agency [in Ottawa, ON, with approximately 75 employees]. We get business and the B2B landscape as few agencies do. We are driven by a passion to create powerful brands executed through engaging campaigns—which ultimately delivers enduring value for our customers. Founded in 1996, McMillan is a trusted advisor to the C-suite of international clients, including Altran, Atos, Cognizant, Commvault, HUB International, Intuit, Schneider Electric, Trend Micro, and Unify (formerly Siemens Enterprise Communications).”
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“The decision to resign our consumer-based accounts and focus exclusively on B2B was a difficult one,” says McMillan President Robert Hyams, “but we knew it was a sound, strategic decision. CMOs in global B2B enterprises are looking for specialists – people who can efficiently ramp up on their business and understand the B2B landscape. And frankly, that is our true strength.”
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Opinion
I rarely include identities for design firms or creative agencies but I thought this was an interesting example; in part because I really dig the old logo and would have loved to see that evolve in the hands of a professional typographer. All those diagonals in italics are too hot to pass up. (The "c" stood out in the wrong way, as clearly they just scaled it down instead of redrawing it to match the weight of the rest of the letters). The new logo isn't fantastic by any standard but it's pretty nice and now has a proper "c". The underline, um, under it works great to keep a solid horizontal wordmark. The McM shorthand works well too, especially with lightbulbs in it (see office shot). What got me was the business cards that kind of sum up the effort: they are elegant and serious but with a creative flair that's just the right amount for the business-to-business clients they do business with. The swag and other applications don't have the finesse of the business cards and feel rushed. The patterns hint at the team itching to be just a tad more creative but they should have either not done them at all (as they don't really add anything meaningful) or try something that is trying less hard to be cool. Overall though, a good example of a design firm mixing business with designiness.
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