Known for Charity. We Do A Lot More…
At Wodehouse, we help charities and businesses look good, communicate clearly and perform well - whatever the brief.
Do something well enough, for long enough, and eventually people start assuming it’s the only thing you do.
At Wodehouse, we’re well known for our work with charities and the public sector, and we’re proud of that. But it’s only part of the picture. We simply do rather more besides, drawing on years of creative experience across sectors as broad as leisure and hospitality to engineering and construction.
Over more than two decades we’ve also worked across commercial sectors including leisure, construction and engineering, producing everything from design and print to websites, direct mail, exhibitions, social media and branded merchandise.
Which occasionally leads to an interesting conversation.
“You do that as well?”
Yes. Quite often, actually.
What charity work does teach you…
Working extensively with charities teaches you some very useful habits. Communication has to be clear, budgets have to work hard and the finished material has to do a real job. There usually isn’t much appetite for producing something simply because it might be nice to have.
That encourages you to ask some fairly basic but important questions. Who is this for? What do we need them to understand? What do we want them to do? Does this need producing at all? And if it does, how can the different parts of the campaign work together rather than simply adding more stuff?
Those disciplines don’t suddenly stop being useful because the organisation on the other side of the desk happens to manufacture something, run a hotel, build houses or sell professional services.
If anything, the ability to make budgets work hard, communicate clearly and keep a brand consistent travels rather well.
So yes, charity is one of our specialisms. It just isn’t a boundary around what we do.
From the everyday to the slightly less obvious
Some of our work is exactly what you might expect from a design and marketing business: brochures, business stationery, flyers, postcards, posters, signage, websites, social media and direct mail.
Then there are the things clients sometimes don’t realise we can help with until they ask.
Exhibition graphics, pull-up banners, large-format displays, stickers, badges, branded clothing, bags, drinkware, notebooks, pens, lanyards, tablecloths, workwear and promotional merchandise all pass through the studio too. There might be a hamper for a customer thank-you, branded clothing for staff or an exhibition system that needs to carry the same identity as the literature sitting alongside it.
That doesn’t mean every marketing project needs to involve seventeen different things with a logo on them. Quite the opposite.
What matters is choosing the things that are useful and then making sure they belong together.
A promotional item with a logo slapped on it isn’t particularly clever. Neither is a beautifully designed exhibition stand that bears only a passing resemblance to the company’s website. Branding works through recognition and consistency, and the more places somebody encounters your organisation, the more important that becomes.
The same thinking, different organisations
One week the brief might be a charity fundraising campaign. The next it could be business stationery, an exhibition stand, a website or a brochure for a commercial client. The subject matter changes, but many of the fundamentals don’t.
It still has to communicate.
It still has to represent the organisation properly.
It still has to work within the available budget.
And, occasionally, it still has to be ready by Friday despite everybody having previously agreed that next Wednesday would be absolutely fine.
That variety is one of the things we enjoy about the work. Different organisations bring different audiences and different problems, but good design and clear thinking travel between them remarkably well.
You may know us for one thing
If you know Wodehouse mainly through our charity work, you might be surprised by how much commercial work passes through the studio, whether from existing clients or through recommendation. Likewise, somebody who has used us for a brochure may not realise we also produce exhibition graphics, websites or branded merchandise.
That’s partly why we occasionally need to remind people what sits behind the Wodehouse name.
We’re proud of the reputation we’ve built in the charity sector. We have no intention of walking away from it or trying to become something entirely different.
We simply do rather more besides, drawing on years of creative experience across sectors as broad as leisure and hospitality to engineering and construction.
And if your next project falls outside what you normally associate with Wodehouse, ask us anyway.
You might get that familiar response.
“Yes. We do that too.”
We love good design and aesthetics and don't feel it should cost the earth either. Across all areas of business and the charity sector Wodehouse have delighted our clients with graphic design, high quality print and direct mail solutions since 2003.