Aldermoor Advisory
An identity for an independent M&A advisory in London, built for founders selling the businesses they spent decades building.
OVERVIEW
Quiet in manner, serious in substance: the opposite of a bank.
Aldermoor is an independent M&A advisory: two senior partners, working by referral, helping founders sell the businesses they've spent decades building. The identity had to earn trust at one of the biggest moments of a founder's working life.
CHALLENGE
A sector that all looks the same.
M&A advisory borrows the look of the big banks: navy, skylines, superlatives.
Aldermoor needed to feel senior and discreet, without the institutional look. The challenge was to signal seriousness through something other than scale.
STRATEGY
Restraint becomes the signal.
The opposite of a bank in manner, and exactly as serious in substance. That means fewer elements, more space and plainer words.
One rule guides every decision the guidelines don't cover: the safe answer is the quieter one.
SYSTEM
Quiet, by design.
A redrawn wordmark, six colours with no tints, two typefaces with fixed jobs, and a grid where the empty third of the page is the brand.
Typography
Canela Medium for every headline. Founders Grotesk for everything else: three styles, each with a fixed job.
Colour
Ink, parchment and the green of standing ground. Six colours, no tints. The greens are structural, never decorative.
Layout
Space is the loudest thing we do. Content takes two thirds of the page at most, and the empty third is the brand.
Voice
Plain before clever. Specific before broad. Quiet before certain.
IN USE – PRINT
Built to be handed over.
Much of Aldermoor's work changes hands on paper: a card after a first meeting, a letter, a document a founder takes home to read properly.
Every piece uses the same few elements (ink and parchment, the A mark and Canela headlines) and leaves the space to do the talking.
IN USE – DIGITAL
The same restraint, on screen.
Online, the brand does the same job with even fewer elements. The website leads with one plain line, "We advise on what matters most.", and the presentations take a founder through a sale one clear step at a time.
The email signature and LinkedIn banner carry the same marks and tone, so every touchpoint feels like one firm.
TAKEAWAY
Restraint is a system decision, not a style.
Restraint only holds when the rules make the quiet choice the easiest one to make. Every part of this system was built to do exactly that.