Hooke Design rebrands The Apprentice star Ruth Badger’s business portfolio

Hooke Design is starting to rebrand former The Apprentice contestant Ruth Badger’s portfolio of businesses, which will see a suite of new identities, guidelines and on-and offline materials worked up.

Rising to fame as a finalist on TV show The Apprentice in 2006, Badger is now a consultant and public speaker with four businesses – three bearing her name.

Badger invited the Blackpool-based consultancy to a ten-way pitch following a recommendation in May, tasking it with rebranding her human resources and recruitment company Horton & Hall Associates (new identity pictured). The identity will be unveiled on the Horton & Hall Associates website, which launches in the next two weeks.

Hooke Design is now working on Ruth Badger Academy, following through one design from 12 iterations presented to Badger last week.

Simon Cooke, creative director at Hooke Design, is looking to clarify the brands and introduce consistency, partly through the use of hand-drawn, acronym-based typographic identities.

Badger says Hooke – whose services are now retained – may approach the Ruth Badger Consultancy brand on the strength of Ruth Badger Academy, which will be branded RBA.

Badger says this will futureproof her businesses and place less reliance on her name. ’I’ve been running businesses with my surname for five years, but I want to ensure credibility for the future,’ she says.

Hooke says the hand-drawn approach that is being taken on the RBA identity will hint at Badger’s ’strong personality’, denoting that she is ’down to earth, opinionated and powerful’ also through the use of ’strong colours’.

Badger describes Hooke’s work so far as the ’tip of the iceberg’ and suggests that the consultancy will be involved in the continued design development of her companies. This will also mean integrating design into marketing.

There are no plans to redesign Ruthbadger.com, Badger’s public speaking company, but Hooke Design will design new websites for each Badger company it reappraises.