Discovery

I began my concept work by exploring ideas built on reflection, conversion and distillation, while steering clear of the clichés that infest translation logos, like globes, speech marks and flags. Somewhere in that exploration the real problem came into focus. However good the new logo was, it would still say Chemical Translator underneath, and that name now ignored half the business.

So I went researching. The European translation market turned out to be like a barbell: billion-dollar corporates at one end, more than 44,000 generic agencies and platform freelancers at the other, and nobody in between operating as a personally branded consultant in the German-English chemical space. Meanwhile AI is swallowing commodity translation from below at a pace, while the judgement-based technical work Sarah's clients kept asking for needed to stay firmly human.

This research reframed everything that followed. Modernising the existing brand – previously the safe option – was now the riskiest choice, because it would anchor Sarah to the exact market segment being consumed by AI.

Three options, rated for spice

I presented three routes, in increasing order of bravery required, each prefaced with a rating borrowed from the Nando's ‘PERI-ometer’ spice scale. Lemon and Herb was a modernisation of the existing brand. Medium involved repositioning through a new strapline and visual treatment. Extra Hot was to retire Chemical Translator entirely and rebuild around a personal brand instead.

Sarah had dismissed the idea of a personal brand years before, for a reason she considered unanswerable: a translator working from German to English, based in England, with a Portuguese surname sends a confusing signal. The answer was in the domain. As sarahsilva.de, the business plants itself in the German market it serves – the name becomes a fact rather than a puzzle. In Sarah's words: "You'd countered all of that, found a solution for it and said, how about this?... And suddenly everything changed."

She registered the new domain the same day.

The design

The identity that carried the new name is a pair of mirrored arrows – representing the two languages – with a letter S revealed in the negative space between them. The strapline, in German, positions the business as translation and marketing for the chemical industry.

The full delivery included logo versions with and without the strapline, together with social media graphics for LinkedIn. A four-page direct mail brochure – again entirely in German – followed later.