Evolving with Aegis
We firmly believe that good design and effective marketing are, at their heart, about stories: solving a problem, meeting a challenge, inventing a new way of doing things. In this series, we’re looking back at some memorable projects for great clients and, in doing so, telling our own story.
In this piece, we revisit our experience working with Dr. John Cook from Aegis, a trusted and established psychologist in Victoria whose working relationship with Leap’s founder and creative director, Neil, goes back decades.
An Evolving Practice
Dr. John Cook has been providing essential psychological services to clients since 1995. In that time, his practice has changed several times: he’s moved locations and transitioned from a group model to an independent one. As his business evolved, he needed his website and marketing efforts to evolve with it. Enter Leap’s Neil Tran.
Neil met John in the early 2000s and persuaded John to redesign his logo. “The big adjustment for me,” John says, “was realizing that symbols that mean a lot to psychologists can mean nothing to the general public.” He explains that Neil helped him see his business from a new angle and find a mark that would resonate with clients.
A full website redesign came next. “That lasted ten years. This is the thing about Neil and Leap’s work in general: it has lasting value,” he said. “It’s cutting edge and has a good lifespan. I consider it a pretty sound investment.” In fact, John was so pleased with his site that he only changed it in 2015 to keep up with technological changes.
“That was around the time that scalability was becoming important so that people could view the website on their devices,” he reflects. Leap’s proposed design was, according to John, “radically different” from what came before. While he was initially a little shocked, he received positive feedback from everyone he showed it to and the design grew on him.
Bold Designs
“I see Leap as the Cadillac of web designers. Neil and the Leap team have been visionary, avant-garde,” he says. “I’d never seen anything like [the site], anywhere. Now it’s accepted and is still regarded very well. People are drawn to it.” Six years later, the Aegis website still looks contemporary and fresh. Working great on any device, it’s fully scalable and integrated with Google Maps, ensuring that John’s clients can find what they need in just a few clicks.
Business Solutions
John also credits Leap with helping him navigate various challenges over the years. For instance, integrating his website with the Jane booking app made client booking a breeze, while setting up an email marketing service has given John the opportunity to reach out to his waitlisted clients when last-minute appointments open up. He also appreciates the Pantheon hosting platform, which ensures his website is secure and working properly. John says, “I can count on one hand the number of times the site’s been down in many years. That’s unusual. Reliability is hugely important.” These technical solutions help the practice run smoothly, so John can focus on helping his clients.
We’re proud to work with great clients like John, whose trust has allowed us to dream big and present him with a number of effective marketing tools over the years, including timeless logos, robust and beautiful websites, and polished business cards.
