Skip to main content

Balancing tradition and innovation in the legal sector.

  • Mellor Olsson
  • Branding
  • Digital
  • Graphic Design
  • Packaging
  • Production

Mellor Olsson is one of South Australia's largest and oldest law firms, having been part of the state’s legal fabric for over 100 years. We were tasked with modernising the firm's brand identity, and refreshing an extensive range of marketing collateral spanning from its website, to corporate photography and print publications.

Honouring a century of equity, while realigning the firm who it had become.

In approaching this project, we sought to better align the firm with what it had become, while still leveraging the history, credibility, reputation and equity it had built over the last century.

We developed a graphic device for Mellor Olsson that’s an abstraction of the scales of justice commonly associated with law, and also the letterforms M and O. While the scales of justice are one of the most immediately recognisable symbols used to convey the legal profession, it is also a tired one. In deconstructing, modernising and animating this symbol, we managed to avert the cliche while still communicating the same meaning. The simplicity of these shapes also communicates Mellor Olsson’s ability to see through the complexity of any given challenge, and its ability to provide clients with clarity.

Balancing approachability and sophistication.

The sky blue colour provides a subtle nod to the firm’s previous brand colour and corporate clientele, while the natural, earthy tones introduced through the sand colour reflect the firm’s ‘feet on the ground’ personality and accessibility to regional clients. Together this colour palette provides Mellor Olsson with a clear point of departure from its competitors, while still staying true to the conservativeness and sophistication of the firm.

The website profiles the firm’s service offering and team, with powerful functionality allowing visitors to filter individual lawyers by service offering, position and location. We photographed the firm’s full team in a style consistent with the brand for use across the website, as well as for a broad range of print collateral — spanning personnel profiles to services brochures.