In late 2010, my wife and I decided to start a new residential cleaning company. I was referred to Matt Wallpe, Brand Strategist with WallpeDesign by my business banker.

In our initial meeting, Matt impressed me with his no-nonsense, low key approach. He “sold me” without trying to sell me. He didn’t waste my time trying to dazzle me with examples of the work that he had done, or talking in geek speak that I wouldn’t understand. Instead, he focused on learning as much as he could about me and my vision for the company I wanted to build. He really asked some great questions, and described for me the typical process for his “discovery, design, develop” approach.

When we got started, I hadn’t even selected a name for the company yet. Matt made what turned out to be a very valuable suggestion to help us with decisions related to brand development. He recommended I solicit input and suggestions from my peers through social media. Not only did this approach help us select the name for the company, it was also used as we asked friends for help with logo, font and color decisions. With the exception of the name, Matt gave us several options for each of these brand components, and I would then either post these on my Facebook page or email Matt’s suggestions to friends and ask for their votes and feedback. The process that we used turned out to be a lot of fun for us and for our friends, and it made us confident that we were making brand choices that would be well received by our target customers.

After we made decisions related to our brand identity, Matt then began work on our website. During this phase of our engagement, Matt asked lots of questions to help him frame up his initial draft. We would look it over, tell him what we liked and what we didn’t, and he would make the appropriate changes. There were a couple of instances where I ran an idea by Matt that he didn’t think would work well with the design scheme or our brand identity. To his credit, Matt would patiently and respectfully tell me how and why my idea wouldn’t be a practical solution. Ultimately, the work that Matt did for us on our website exceeded our expectations. We wanted to project a brand image that rivaled the nationally franchised residential cleaning companies — what some people call maid services, but I have never liked that term — and Matt’s work certainly did that. We have received several compliments on both our brand identity and the functionality of our website.

“The idea for the top hat and cleaning supplies came to me at our first discovery meeting, within minutes of Mike telling me the name of his business. After a few sketches I threw together a comp to show to Mike. With a few tweaks and font and color studies, the final logo design came together quickly. I was very fortunate that Mike was able discribe his business clearly and was receptive to my vision.”

We really enjoyed working with Matt, and I have referred him to friends and networking contacts. Matt has become a trusted business partner to Whole House Magic, and has put us in touch with other local business owners in his network. If I can answer any questions related to using Wallpe Design for your brand development or website design, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

~ Mike Finn, Owner Whole House Magic

See more of our projects at the WallpeDesign web site