APS Marketing
Brand Refresh · Website Redesign · 2025 · 04/21Rebranding a marketing agency to read like a blueprint, not a brochure
Goal
A complete brand refresh and website redesign for APS Marketing Group — a Brooklyn agency offering web, SEO, social, and brand strategy on subscription plans — distilling a broad service offering into a focused presence built to convert skeptical first-time visitors.
Challenge
When a marketing agency asks you to redesign their brand, every choice is visible to a client who sells the exact same thing. APS needed an identity that earns trust before the first conversation, makes a wide service menu feel focused, and positions a subscription as the obvious next step.
Outcome
The brand became a literal blueprint — saturated red on a working grid — twelve services compressed into three pillars (Perform / Develop / Innovate), with a single conversion path to a Free Assessment. Across shipped work it lifted user engagement ~20% and social engagement ~40%.
Marketing agencies tend to look like marketing agencies — gradients, lifestyle stock, vague verbs. APS earns trust by doing the opposite: a literal blueprint drawn in saturated red on a working-grid ground. The mark is a “you are here” navigation pin — fitting for an agency whose pitch is wayfinding through a noisy market.
The system
- A red navigation-arrow “you are here” mark
- A chunky condensed display sans for headlines
- A working construction grid as the ground for every page
- Nothing decorative — every line measures, frames, or directs
A subscription agency lives or dies on whether a first-time visitor can name what you sell. APS’s twelve overlapping disciplines were compressed into three verbs — Perform, Develop, Innovate — each opening into four deliverables and one paragraph of proof. The visitor never sees a menu of twelve; they see three promises, each backed by a case study.
Three pillars
- Perform — paid + organic growth
- Develop — site engineering & ops
- Innovate — brand, design, content
- Each pillar backed by case-study proof
Long-form is where most agency sites quietly fall apart. APS holds the line with a typographic editorial system — case studies numbered like museum exhibits, a blog built from one repeating cell that scales from one card to a hundred — and a mobile system that keeps the construction grid intact down to 375px without losing a single mark.
Held end to end
- Case studies numbered like museum exhibits
- A single repeating blog cell, stamped at scale
- Pull-quote ground + two-column article view
- The construction grid holds down to 375px
Palette — Paint
#E63329
APS Red
Primary · marks · construction lines · CTAs
#0B0B0E
Ink
Type · captions · footers
#EDEDEA
Paper
Ground · canvas · grid
#9CA3AF
Dimension
Secondary marks · rule weights · soft greys