Accent
— making jobs work for everyone. A company that matches job seekers with employers enters its new era, setting a new standard in the HR sector.
After years of a steady evolution, Accent was ready to take bolder steps
Accent is a talent placement company specialising in both permanent roles and temporary contracts. Founded in 1995, it’s part of the House of HR group, a leading HR services network in Europe. After years of a steady evolution, Accent was ready to take bolder steps toward becoming a more digital, dynamic and contemporary brand, while maintaining the personal feel they’re known for. A key challenge was to strengthen its diluted brand equity, which was at times overshadowed by other brands within the group. This was a truly multidisciplinary task, spanning from strategic questions about brand architecture and stakeholder journeys to digital and spatial design. These milestones could only be reached with a solid foundation of a renewed brand.
Accent is all about acting smoothly and spot-on—removing hassle for both candidates and employers. The end goal? Getting it right the first time, every time. But landing on this essence, we sifted through a broad spectrum of research insights, from business deep dives, trends and cultural contexts to a comprehensive brand review, including its architecture.
Accent’s initial brand architecture called for a clearer, more focused portfolio, where each brand had a strong reason to exist and worked in a complementary way. To achieve this, we transformed the traditional hierarchical structure into a simplified flexible network model. This model distinguishes between brands focused on target groups or communities on the one hand and Accent’s services on the other.
The next step: brand strategy. While keeping the well-established elements, we enriched the framework with new drivers for Accent’s future: strategic pillars, brand values and personality, a verbal direction supported by a manifesto, and a clearly defined brand promise.
The path to growth is personal, whether for an individual candidate or a company. Accent acts as a catalyst that accelerates this growth by providing the resources, knowledge, and networks needed to unlock the next steps for its clients. While the rebranding aimed for a profound update, the challenge was to blend contemporary boldness with a sense of trustworthiness and reliability.
Visually, Accent remains rooted in its signature orange, paired with white to form the foundation of the brand palette. We further combined it with the secondary colours to introduce a broader scope of design possibilities and applications across themes and sub-brands.
The messaging and hero typography revolve around a single keyword: statement. A big and bold type delivers daring one-liners, becoming a defining feature of the new Accent. At the same time, this playful scaling injects flexibility and dynamism into the brand system.
For photography and video, we opted for closeness and relatability. We showcase our audiences in real-life dynamic shots as well as eye-catching, close-up portraits that feel intimate and genuine.
One of the key elements revised in the strategic process was the customer journey. To deliver on Accent’s promise of a smooth and easy experience in line with the pinpointed needs and expectations, we provided Accent with the new, smooth and easy web design.
Finally, the updated brand was extended into physical spaces. We provided creative direction for the first office concept. Here, the space itself becomes a statement, embodying the company’s positive, proactive and collaborative mindset.
