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by Mark Tungate (@MarkTungate) Blending design, branding and social strategy, small but nimble new outfit Jones & Bone is the perfect example of a 21st century agency. Read on to find out why the London-based duo prefer the term “creative boutique”.

When I saw the press release that led to this article, I was intrigued by the agency’s name: Jones & Bone. The website looked pretty spruce so I searched for contact details. Then I found out that “Jones” was none other than Sarah Norford-Jones, a former student of mine at Parsons School of Design in Paris. It seemed the perfect excuse to catch up and find out about her new operation.

“When we put the names together, it just worked,” says Norford-Jones, who met her partner in life and work, Keith Nigel Bone, at branding and content agency, Sunshine.

It certainly does: Jones & Bone sounds like a TV show about a couple of cops solving crimes in Sixties London. In reality, the duo and their collaborators solve branding problems in Hipster London; their offices are in Shoreditch. The agency is over a year old. Except, by the way, it’s not an agency.

“Creative boutique”

Says Norford-Jones, “When we decided to start something on our own, we knew it had to be small and flexible. Which is why we don’t call it an agency — we call it a creative boutique. Even in the future, we want to keep it tightly knit. We never want to grow bigger than 10.”

Norford-Jones comes from a design and management background, with stints in fashion PR and then brand management at Iris Worldwide before being headhunted to support new business at Sunshine. Bone is a digital art director and creative with more than a decade’s experience at big names such as Mother and BBH, among others. One of his heroes is BBH co-founder, Sir John Hegarty.

“I grew up in Malta and two of my biggest memories are MTV and the Levi’s ads: people bursting through walls, Mr. Boombastic and all that,” he recalls. Something of the vibrancy and optimism of those brands comes through on the agency’s site.

“We have a lot of passions in common: we both love photography, we’re interested in traditional advertising, but also in branding,” says Norford-Jones.

Digital heft

Bone brings digital heft to the partnership. Their first big project involved creating a coherent brand identity for App4, which provides mobile apps for small businesses. Their work for the company has embraced everything, from designing a new logo to creating a website and building a social and content strategy.

Says Bone: “What we do is tell stories across several platforms. It starts with the branding, which we’ll then carry through to the website, responsive design, social media like Instagram — for example, we do curated monthly shoots — and on into the campaign. So there’s a narrative thread.”

They are constantly creating content: even when they travel, they take photos destined for clients’ Instagram feeds. This, combined with the boutique structure, enables them to stay close to their customers. “When they work with a creative boutique, clients can see where their money and our energy and craft goes,” he observes.

Social savvy

“We don’t have a hierarchy,” adds Norford-Jones. “You don’t have to meet with the creative, then the planner, then another person, then yet another person. That may be necessary at a huge agency, but we don’t have to work that way. We can be more like an extension of the client team.”

The clients concerned are often startups, so a certain amount of frankness comes into play. “We know they don’t have hundreds of thousands to spend. So we’ll ask them to tell us honestly what they can afford, and we’ll work backwards from that and tell them what we can deliver.”

This accessible approach has enabled them to work with a range of unusual brands, from an influential food “vlogger” to an eco-friendly bohemian fashion brand from Anatolia. If they need to scale up for a project, they’ll bring in talent from outside. “The right people for the right job,” as Bone puts it.

Jones & Bone Back to Berlin

Their biggest project to date has been for the documentary, Back To Berlin. The film follows 11 bikers — all Holocaust survivors or their descendants — as they replicate an historic journey from Tel Aviv to Berlin for the European Maccabiah Games, also known as the Jewish Olympics.

Back to Berlin

Although the documentary was still being edited, the filmmakers wanted an interactive website and branding materials that would raise awareness of the project — especially if they needed funding for distribution and marketing.

Bone says: “Rather than just promoting the film, they wanted to create an educational platform. So the site includes an interactive map with hot spots where you can see pictures and insights. All the bikers are making the trip their ancestors took; they’re telling stories that might have been lost.”

The project came to them via a recommendation from an existing client. Word-of-mouth is clearly working for Jones & Bone, which makes sense, given their social savvy. I note that they’re based in East London which, over the past few years, has leapt from accessible to pricey. But the couple both lives in the area — and many of the startups that are potential clients are there, too.

So what are their plans for the future? Both of them are constantly having ideas, whether it’s for an app, a book, an event — even a product. “We’ve got the first 15 months [at the time of writing — ed-at-large] under our belt, now it’s about nurturing what we’ve got and growing our client base,” says Jones. “But maybe at the end of this year we’ll have time for some of our dreams.”

 

Mark TungateMark Tungate (@MarkTungate) is the editorial director of the Epica Awards (@EpicaAwards), the only global creative prize judged by the specialist press. In this series of articles called Design Plus, Epica highlights creativity in the design field.

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