Canada New work · App branding & UI/UX

From a sketch
to every screen.

We branded huddlie, a keepsake app for the years a child pours into what they love, from a crayon drawing to 86 designed screens its developers build from. Launching an app? This is how we start.

The huddlie app: Ava's season as a keepsake timeline
The huddlie mark as first drawn in crayon
Where it started

Canada Premium brand creation · Dubai

One clinic,
three ways in.

We created Mediteria, a high-end clinic in Dubai, from the name up: Mediterranean and medical in one word, then a colour for each of its three worlds, from operations to beauty treatments to recovery.

The three Mediteria division labels, each on its own colour of one pattern
The Mediteria M in gold on dark paper
The name came first

Canada Premium print & packaging

Printed in
gold and silver.

Four Shabby Chic scents, each with its own colours, finished in gold and silver foil so the quality shows before the box is even opened.

Four Shabby Chic gift boxes, one per scent
A Shabby Chic label up close
Foil, up close

What we do

Created by designers.
Kept that way by your AI.

Every agency has AI now. That's a baseline, not a difference. What matters is what the AI is working from. Designers build your brand here, by hand, and you leave with the file that holds your own tools inside it. The everyday work stays on brand without a designer on your payroll.

01

Branding in the digital AI era

AI can assemble a logo in seconds. It can't decide what a brand should mean. Strategy, naming and identity are authored here, by hand, then documented so exactly that every tool you use stays inside them.

  • Brand strategy & positioning
  • Naming & brand architecture
  • Logo & visual identity systems, drawn not generated
  • Your SKILL.md, plus the evals that test it
02

Marketing in the digital AI era

AI made output cheap, which made sameness the default. We set the positioning, the voice and the idea worth having, then hand your team the rules to execute against without going off-brand.

  • Go-to-market & campaign strategy
  • Content & social systems
  • Advertising & creative production
  • On-brand templates your team can run themselves
03

Digital in the digital AI era

Templates ship fast and look like everyone else's. Sites, motion and 3D are designed and built here, then handed over with the brand file, so what you make next still looks like you.

  • Websites & digital experiences
  • Motion graphics & animation
  • 3D & product visualization
  • Handover files your own tools can read

How we work

A brand in eight weeks.

The shape of a standard engagement. Scope moves the dates, never the order: nothing gets designed before we know what we are designing against, and nothing ships without the files that keep it right afterwards.

Scroll to follow the timeline

Week 1
01

Research

We learn the business before anything gets drawn: what you sell, who buys it, what they are really choosing between, and where the current brand is costing you. We talk to your team, your customers and the people who do your selling.

Competitive landscape

Every real competitor pulled apart: their positioning, their visual codes, the claims the whole category repeats. We map what the market already expects, so we know exactly which of those rules are worth breaking.

Market and sales

How the brand has to behave where money actually changes hands: the shelf, the pitch, the search result, the first meeting. We write the one message that has to survive all four.

Week 2
02

Positioning and archetype

What the brand stands for, who it is for, and the archetype it plays. Signed off before a single visual is made, because everything after it is built to serve this one decision.

Week 3
03

Analysis and ideas

Everything gathered so far gets read together, and the patterns in it become directions worth drawing. Then the part that looks like nothing and decides everything: brainstorming, and sketching by hand, fast and in quantity, so the weak ideas are found early and cheaply.

Week 4
04

Design concepts

The sketches that survived are built properly. A small number of distinct concepts, each one a real answer to the positioning rather than a variation on the same thought, taken far enough that you can judge it honestly.

Week 5
05

Concept in context

Once the direction is chosen, it gets applied to the places it will actually live: the email signature, the website landing page, the business card, the social post. We keep adjusting it against those until it stops looking like a logo and starts looking like the brand.

Between weeks 5 and 6

Presentation

We pick a date together as soon as the concepts are running, and hold a few options either side of it so the room can be the right room. This is where the work is walked through end to end, in person or on a call, before anyone starts revising it.

Week 6
06

Revisions

Your notes, worked through properly rather than patched over. We change what needs changing, say so when a request would cost more than it gains, and take the direction back through the same applications so nothing quietly breaks on the way.

Week 7
07

Preparing the files

Everything gets made production ready: logo files in every format, email signatures, banners, social post templates, website assets and the print artwork. Named, organised and handed over so your team can find what it needs without asking us.

Week 8
08

Final touches

There is always something needed or forgotten. This is the week we do those. The small corrections, the one extra size, the file somebody realises they need on the Friday, all closed off before the project is called done.

What you leave with

Deliverables

The first group ships on every branding engagement. The second is scoped to what you actually need, and priced with the project rather than assumed into it.

Every engagement

  • Logo and identity filesFull lockups, every format, print and screen.
  • Type and colour systemTypefaces, scale, palette and the rules for using them.
  • Business cards and stationeryPrint-ready artwork for the things you hand over.
  • Email signaturesSet up for the mail clients your team actually uses.
  • Social media templatesEditable, on-brand, sized for each platform.
  • SKILL.mdYour agents load it themselves. The evals keep it honest.

See what is inside the SKILL.md ↗

Scoped per project

  • Website or app designDesigned and built, or designed for your developers.
  • Posters and printCampaign artwork, signage, brochures, editorial.
  • Motion and animationLogo animation, social motion, title sequences.
  • 3D and product visualisationRenders and product imagery before anything is made.
  • PackagingStructure, artwork and dielines for the shelf.
  • Campaign and ad creativeThe idea, then the versions each channel needs.
Akin Tangun, Creative Director of ADWORKS
Akin Tangun Creative Director · ADWORKS Canada & Global

Weighing up a rebrand, or want a straight second opinion on work in progress? Write to the person who would do it.

akin.tangun@adworks.ca ↗

Who writes your brand skill

Your brand, written as a skill your AI can follow.

Guidelines describe how a brand looks. A designer fills in the rest from experience. A model has none to fill it with, so the judgement has to be written down.

A designer who has never shipped code writes a beautiful PDF no tool can read. An engineer who has never built a brand writes a clean file with no judgement in it. The brand skill comes from doing both, which is also why these two sites are hand coded rather than assembled.

Proven in branding

  • 10+Still active brands he designed, each with over US$100M in revenue.Best sellers such as Sütaş Ayran, Molfix and Familia
  • ~$820MTurnover behind Sütaş, whose identity he rebuilt.Sütaş 2022 annual report
  • 100+Countries his work still sells in.Molfix, Familia and Papia via Hayat, plus Sütaş exports
  • No.1Sütaş Ayran leads its category. He drew the logo and the pack.Sütaş 2022 annual report

Proven in web, code and UX

  • Since 2000Designed and developed his first professional website, in Dreamweaver.
  • CodeWrote his own Flash portfolio in ActionScript, 1,800 lines. Now JavaScript and Node, with hands-on Unity experience.
  • Web awardsAcıbadem health group's websites, unified under one brand, won three international awards: Davey Gold, IMA, Golden Spider.
  • UI & UXCreative director at a digital agency: he designs for what users need on screen and what developers need in the file, and bridges the two.

See what is inside a brand skill ↗

Delivered with every project

Your brand, written so your AI can't break it.

Your identity ships as a SKILL.md: frontmatter so an agent loads it by description rather than on being told, the rules in plain Markdown, and usage limits written as constraints rather than suggestions. It lives in version control, so brand changes arrive as reviewable diffs. The evals ship with it, test cases asserting what correct output looks like, so a model upgrade or a careless prompt fails a run instead of reaching production.

Model-agnostic by design: the file outlives whichever provider you standardise on this year.

SKILL.md
---
name: adworks-brand
description: ADWORKS colour, type and
  usage rules. Load for any ADWORKS
  asset, post, slide or page.
---

## Colour
teal    #00bbaf   Branding
blue    #00aeef   Digital
purple  #9e63b9   Marketing
ink     #1c1a1b   Text

## Type
display   Fraunces
body/ui   Archivo

## Usage
- Wordmark: light grey on dark, dark on light
- Service colour follows the discipline, never decoration
- Headlines in display, everything else in body

Miller Advisors got the book and the skill.

A pricing consultancy with an identity and no way to protect it once the work started being made by software. Their guidelines and their brand skill are now generated from one source, so the rules a designer reads and the rules an agent follows are the same rules.

8icons 12colours 2press files 11/11behaviour tests passed

Every agency adopted AI. Very few hand you the file, and the tests, that keep your brand in line once they leave the room. Start a project ↗

Selected work

Brands built to last.

A range of the work: app and company branding, websites, full brand launches, and the experiential 3D work we're known for. Roles and partners credited as delivered.

App / Digital Product BrandingStartup · UI/UX

huddlie

A keepsake app for families, branded from a crayon sketch and designed screen by screen: the mark, a clickable prototype, 86 screens in light and dark, and a design system its developers build from.

Role: App Branding · UI/UX Design · Screen Kit · Design System

Read the case study ↗
A Mercedes-Benz SUV on a lit showroom turntable
Experiential BrandingInteractive 3D

Mercedes-Benz Canada

A large-screen configurator experience: model, colour and wheel selection explored in real-time 3D.

Role: Visual Concept · 3D Animation
With: Commersive

View the project ↗
A Dyson retail stand with the vacuum in a lit timber display bay
Experiential BrandingInteractive 3D

Dyson Canada

Real-size, immersive 3D product presentation and interactive feature showcase.

Role: Visual Concept · 3D Animation
With: Commersive

View the project ↗
Mediteria Clinic logo
Luxury · Medical · Dubai

Mediteria Clinic

A ground-up luxury clinic brand: name, identity and three distinct sub-identities for its Medical, Cosmetic and Wellness divisions, with photorealistic 3D visualization.

Role: Naming · Brand Architecture · Identity · 3D

View the project ↗
Shabby Chic gift boxes in four scents
Premium Print & Packaging

Shabby Chic

A vintage-floral bath, body and home fragrance line: four scents, one ornate label, gift boxes made to be unwrapped.

Role: Concept · Illustration · Packaging
For: Hunter Amenities

View the project ↗
Construction · Real estate

COG Developments
& COG Construction

One family, two connected brands in Nova Scotia: a developer and the builder behind its communities. We designed both websites, each with its own voice, both clearly related.

Role: Website Design · Two Brands

View the project ↗
The MTNS Solutions website
Company BrandingB2B · Tech

MTNS Solutions

A complete corporate identity and website for an IT & cybersecurity firm. The founder credits us with creating both the brand and its digital home.

Role: Brand Identity · Corporate · Website

View the project ↗
Dodoner on Queen Street West: the projecting sign, the storefront at night, the hanging sign and the menu board
Full brand launch

Dodoner

A restaurant brand built from the name up: identity, packaging, signage, menus, social, an animated logo and a responsive 3D website. The founder credits us with creating the business name itself, then the world around it.

Role: Naming · Brand Identity · Packaging · Signage · Digital & 3D

View the project ↗

ADWORKS in the United States

Led by Didem Lutwak
Co-Founder & Brand Executive

Our U.S. business is run from San Diego by Didem Lutwak, co-founder and brand executive, working alongside Creative Director Akin Tangun.

didem.lutwak@adworks.ca

Meet Didem ↗

Our Creative Branding Blog

A working QR code, drawn as our skyline.

Every QR code does the same job. Ours does it while drawing San Diego, Dubai and Toronto. Every module that carries the link is also a building. Same function, a code no one else could use.

Back of an ADWORKS business card: a city skyline including the CN Tower, drawn entirely from QR-code modules, above adworksglobal.com and adworks.ca
Front of Akin Tangun's ADWORKS card, showing the AD monogram with the ADWORKS wordmark in teal running off the top edge
A fanned stack of ADWORKS cards showing the skyline QR backs

Wouldn't you rather hand over something that looks different, and more elegant, than everyone else in the room? Read the post ↗ Visit the blog

Let's build something that lasts

Ready to stand out?

Tell us about the brand you're building, or the one that needs a second act. We'll bring the strategy, the craft and 25 years of judgement.

Toronto · hello@adworks.ca

Where we are

Rooted in Toronto. Working everywhere.

Toronto
Ontario, Canada · HQ

Our home base, where ADWORKS Canada leads branding, marketing and digital for North American clients.

San Diego
California, USA

Our U.S. presence, serving American clients through ADWORKS Global.

Dubai
United Arab Emirates

Where work like the Mediteria Clinic brand connects us to the Middle East market.