Practice
A design hub, not a factory.
Design Lab North is where brand, marketing, and the website meet. Identities, principles, redesigns, facelifts, and new builds — made here, shown in the greenhouse, then moved onto a home of their own.
What we do
Brands and identities. Marketing principles that still hold when the campaign is over. Redesigns and facelifts for sites that have drifted. New websites, hosted while they grow, then migrated when they are ready to stand alone.
Selected clients
- Boots
- Virgin Retail
- Marks & Spencer
- Sainsbury’s
- Matalan
- Co-op Retail
- Co-op Bank
- Halifax Bank
- Manchester Airport
- Commonwealth Games Manchester
- W H Smith
- Laura Ashley
- Laterooms
- Applearn
- Manchester United Soccer Schools
- S4C
- DBS
- TIP International
- Whitworth Art Gallery
- Royal Exchange
The work
The work is identities, marketing principles, redesigns, facelifts, and the websites that have to carry them. Dave Kirkwood — Dave Kirkwood Studio, formerly Walsh Simmons — is a multi-award-winning designer for branding and marketing, and a former lecturer of branding. The practice is a nominated brand and marketing advisor to Lancashire County Council, and consults with businesses across the region. Work has been spoken in public, hosted, printed, and put on screen.
For the last ten years that work has sat directly with businesses, organisations, and multi-nationals — and with their agencies, under NDA — on brand strategy and how the brand behaves online. Further detail can be given under NDA.
Enquiries
A site, a brand, a facelift that needs to be made properly — write to build@designlabnorth.com. Look at the greenhouse if you want to see how we work first.