Abbeygate

The design challenge

Abbeygate came to us with a clear plan: launch a new high-end leather goods brand to compete with Smythson and Aspinal of London. As a white label manufacturer for luxury brands, he felt Abbeygate had the craft credentials to compete at that level directly.

It was a compelling idea. It was also the wrong one.

Before any design work began, we took time to understand the business properly, the bulk print and component manufacturing in India, the handmade leather production and paper-into-leather bindery in Walsall, the deep expertise in customisation, the established reputation in B2B wholesale. The more we understood, the clearer it became: Abbeygate wasn't looking at a gap in the luxury market. It was looking at the problem from the wrong direction entirely.

What we solved

Rather than building a new brand from scratch in a crowded luxury space where Abbeygate had no recognition, we repositioned the existing brand around what it genuinely does best, beautiful, customisable diaries, journals, notebooks and leather goods, with English heritage at the heart of the story.

The digital transformation, led by e-commerce specialist Justine Wyness and digital partner Tom, restructured the entire business model to match. A B2B front end with trade logins for bulk discounting sits alongside a B2C customisation platform, giving Abbeygate the ability to sell volume with added design value and better margins, rather than competing one luxury diary at a time against brands with decades of recognition.

The sensory language of paper

The design language makes the product the hero. Every visual element connects back to paper itself, the material Abbeygate works with every day. The logo and icons are drawn from origami, the folded and crafted paper form that speaks to precision and craft. The wider visual language uses paper sculpture and collage: towns, cities, landmarks and buildings across the UK and beyond, all constructed from paper, combining AI with hand collage and original pattern designs by graduate students from Arts University Bournemouth.

The result is an identity that is completely authentic to what Abbeygate makes and how it makes it. Every touchpoint, from the website to the product range to the merchandise, bags, water bottles and stationery, carries the same tactile, crafted sensibility. A brand you can almost feel before you've touched the product.