Mann McGowan

Client : Mann McGowan
Market : Architectural and Building Industry
Services : Design and production for print, exhibition and advertising. Web design,development and hosting. Copy writing. Photography, Illustration and 3d modelling. Forensic Lead Tracking and marketing consultancy.
Web : www.mannmcgowan.co.uk
Overview : Mann McGowan are one of the true innovators in the building industry. Their products help protect against fire, smoke, toxic fumes and acoustic pollution. Originally a client in the early nineties, they were one of our most active clients for many years, we built our very first website for them in 2004. Of recent times things had been very quiet and the business was suffering until in 2016 up stepped their current MD Jamie Scott with a new business plan and backing from the original intumescent innovator Rob Mann. Jamie, along with technical director Russell Smith have grabbed the bull by the horns and through relentless hard work have positioned Mann McGowan back at the top of their industry where they belong. It has been our absolute pleasure to support them through this period and we look forward to partnering with them in their future endeavours.

Branding

The original Mann McGowan logo had stayed pretty much identical over the past three decades right up to the launch of the new 2016 website, when we made a free of charge upgrade that maintained the same aesthetics of the original, but was improved by using a more contemporary font with a few tweeks. Very much a case of keeping things simple and cost-effective.

Literature

Mann McGowan had nearly 30 data sheets, lots of different formats and all requiring updates, after a product evaluation some of these were rationalised out. We came up with a simple modern design that would work on screen as PDFs as well as in print. By batching them up for the first print run we were able to keep the unit cost to an absolute minimum. A lot of the original images were from airbrush illustrations done in the 90’s (we’ve still got them!) and needed to be updated with new realistic 3d modelled versions. Jamie was keen to match and surpass the quality of his competitors and with that as our brief, we set out to fulfil it, working with long-time collaborator and top-notch illustrator Richard Chasemore.

Website

The brief and deadline for the website were all well incorporated into Jamie’s Business Plan and delivering late on this was not an option. The site wasn’t going to be e-commerce at this stage, but they were hoping to add this functionality in a later phase. Also key was the ability for them to do future updates themselves and add products and news releases with ease. Using WordPress as the CMS and WooCommerce for the products section we turned off all the shop functions so that it displays the products whilst supporting all the useful functionality for galleries, downloading support literature and links to related accessories and products.

The deadline was met, the client made sure of that by releasing regular HTML emails with a countdown clock stating new website coming soon – no pressure then!

Photography and Illustration

As mentioned previously, the original illustrations we produced for the client were all airbrush illustrations pre-dating todays super realistic digitally modelled ones. The problem with intumescent products is that although they look just fine when installed, they are not particularly great to look at in their raw state, the material texture can be coarse and unrefined thus it’s best to recreate them in a more visually attractive format. You also have to show them installed by ghosting and cutaways which makes for a lot of illustrations when you have a product range as wide as Mann McGowan’s.

Mann McGowan also have an installation service often requiring portfolio images, we have supplied both product and location photography to them over the years.