1994 was a year of new beginnings – the Channel Tunnel was opened to international applaud, Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as South Africa’s first black president, Michael Schumacher controversially won his first formula one championship and Tony Blair had become leader of the Labour party following the premature death of John Smith. It was also the launch year for a number of new brands that would become household names and redefine the world.

Yahoo, a brand new search engine had launched, promising to revolutionise our use of the burgeoning Internet. Sony had tentatively dipped their toes in to the world of computer gaming with their PlayStation console, and a tiny American company called Cadabra had ambitious plans to change the retail market forever (later changing their name, the following year, to Amazon). In light of the above, it would be easy to be overly modest about our own achievements, but a quick glance at even the most conservative estimates of companies that sadly fail within their first year makes us rightly proud of our achievements.

For a design agency, the 1980s had arguably brought about the biggest changes in the tools of our trade. Toward the end of the decade, many agencies had begun replacing paste-up boards and letrasets with Apple Macintosh computers. By the 1990s, software applications like Adobe Photoshop had become ubiquitous and many agencies were starting to realise they either had to keep up with change, or become extinct. With hindsight, it’s easy to see how rapidly technology has grown, and believe that the rise of the Internet was a foregone conclusion, but the world of 1994 was a very different place. The majority of UK households did not have a computer in their homes, and even fewer had a dial-up Internet connection. The lucky few that were online, would have had a mere 10,000 websites to choose from. For even the most prophetic of industry commentators, it would have been difficult to comprehend just how much growth and potential we’d see in web design and digital. It would be another seven years, in 2001, before IE would hit the trend head on with the acquisition of a digital web consultancy.

On the face of it, you may take this to mean that I’m telling you how unrecognisable the industry has become. However, when people meet me, and we get chatting about my work, I’d say the exact opposite. Yes, technology has had a massive impact on our work – it’s changed the nature of the projects we undertake, and changed the way in which we complete them. However the reason IE is still here after 20 years is not about the distinction between ‘design for print’, or ‘design for web’. We’re communication experts who seek to understand the objectives of our clients and help them to reach wider audiences through great design. It doesn’t matter to us whether the end result is a brochure, a website or an app – paper and pixels are just the format, and as we all know, formats always change – so the foundation of our service of communication and brand storytelling is remarkably unchanged from its beginnings.

Brands, at their best, are timeless. It’s one of the reasons that terms like ‘brand equity’ have emerged in recent years to help businesses quantify the value of their brands. Brands can outlive their founders, outgrow their headquarters, and outshine their competitors. 1994 saw the rebranding of the international courier company ‘Federal Express’. The newly named ‘FedEx’ is often lauded as one of the most successful logo redesigns of recent times and has won over 40 industry awards – largely due to the ‘hidden arrow’ contained within the negative space of the letters ‘E’ and ‘X’. The 1994 redesign has remained unchanged over that time – surely the mark of a successful rebranding exercise? While that’s undoubtedly true, I’d argue that super brands have the power to survive far longer. We only have to take a look at the Coca Cola logo – which has remained largely unchanged since 1887 – 127 years of a consistent visual identity, set of values and loyal customer base.

Just like brands, a business cannot survive without loyalty and trust. IE has survived because of the support of our many valued clients and we are truly grateful to everyone who has travelled with us for two decades – for setting us countless creative challenges, and for providing rewarding work for dozens of families, and for imbuing us with enthusiastic testimonials and generous referrals.

20 years in business is a time to celebrate and to recognise our journey to date – but, when you consider that a really great brand can span centuries, 20 years really is just a drop in the ocean. It is our firm hope, and ambition, that the best really is yet to come…