Stris & Maher LLP
An Avant-Garde Brand and Website Design for Stris
The firm
Stris & Maher LLP is an award-winning boutique law firm based in Los Angeles. Nationally recognized for their abilities as strategists, presenters and storytellers, they are a courtroom-tested team representing high profile clients on a wide range of litigation challenges. Their entrepreneurial lawyers have focused on make-or-break cases and complex legal disputes with high-value settlements, providing 24/7 wraparound legal services for their clients since 2007.
The challenge
Founder Peter Stris and the firm’s star-studded Ivy League team had a unique vision for rebranding the renowned L.A. law firm. As an outlier among traditional players in the legal field, Stris Law sought out fSquared Marketing to devise a cutting-edge brand identity and design a polished website showcasing the firm’s dynamic personality.
The work
Branding
Discovery & Verbal Brand: Finding the Firm’s Voice
The former Stris website was built on a simple, non-distinctive template. With little time and effort invested into branding, the firm’s low-profile online presence wasn’t living up to the team’s transformational impact in the legal world.
Our team of legal marketing experts and creators led the firm through research and discovery sessions to create comprehensive brand guidelines. With the firm’s specific audiences in mind, we collaborated to develop the brand spirit and key messaging for telling the Stris story.
Visual Brand: Designing the Visual Brand
For the overall design direction of the new Stris brand, we looked beyond the legal industry—drawing inspiration instead from the hip worlds of architecture, fashion, social media and tech. Our mood boards featured an energetic colour palette with bright hues and rich gradients, as well as typography design based on modern, edgy fonts. The primary logo and logomark feature an iconic “S” element based on the striking simplicity of app symbols. With a dynamic and fast-paced feel, the new Stris logomark features as a foundational design element throughout the new website and communications collateral.
Website Design & Photography
Scope and Design
When it came to designing the firm’s online presence, we created a photography-forward website with the spaciousness of editorial magazine spreads. Using text selectively, we incorporated graphic elements with striking visual contrast and enticing angles. We styled high contrast buttons, iconography and graphic elements, using the new brand colours to help navigate the website.
Art Direction & Photography
Our team provided art direction and photo retouching for a series of photoshoots, including remote on-location sessions throughout L.A., a candid shoot at the Stris office, and in-studio photography for attorney bios. The overall visuals for the website incorporated subtle architectural elements, providing depth, dimension and a sense of place that differentiates Stris from competing firms.
Lawyer Bios
The strength of the Stris bench of talent lies in their lawyers’ top-notch credentials, and track record of winning unwinnable cases. The bio pages prominently feature each team member’s Ivy League education and legal accomplishments, with large headshots of the lawyers looking directly at the viewer. Each bio has a simple print-to-PDF option so prospective clients can easily download lawyer’s resumes.
Communications Collateral
Bringing the new Stris brand into three dimensions, we created a punchier, more contemporary take on stationery including business cards, letterhead, envelopes and an eSignature. Using a two-sided execution of the logomark, we also designed mockups of promotional items such as notebooks, water bottles, and apparel.
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