Studio Gascoigne’s brand consultancy service takes a client’s brand identity — the logo, the colour and material language, the values, the promise made to customers — and translates it into the physical design of a retail store, showroom, or commercial space, so the space itself communicates the brand before a customer picks anything up. As an Auckland-based studio, our approach comes down to one line we’ve built the whole practice around: design sells.
Why physical space is a brand touchpoint, not decoration
A logo on a shopfront and a brand lived out in three dimensions are two different things. Materials, lighting, layout, the way a customer moves through a room, all of it either reinforces what a brand stands for or quietly contradicts it. Brand consultancy at Studio Gascoigne means reading a client’s existing identity closely enough to know which of those decisions matter, then designing the space so they line up. It’s not applying a logo to a wall. It’s asking what the brand promises a customer and making sure the room delivers on it.
Who does the translating
This work sits across a multi-disciplinary team, registered architects, interior and retail designers, and technicians, working under principal Mark Gascoigne. That range matters for brand consultancy specifically: getting from a brand strategy document to a built, code-compliant, genuinely retail-functional space takes design judgement and technical delivery in the same room. The studio has picked up 170+ design awards along the way, recognition that’s come from projects where the brand identity and the space were treated as one problem, not two separate briefs.
Brand identity in built form
The clearest way to explain brand consultancy is through the work itself. For NZ fashion designer Trelise Cooper, the brief meant translating a distinctive, feminine, detail-led fashion identity into flagship retail space that feels as considered as the garments themselves. For Wright’s Jewellers, it meant designing a space that carries the trust and craftsmanship a jewellery brand depends on, well before a customer reaches the counter. Wild Pair is another example of a brand whose physical stores had to do more than display stock, they had to read as the brand at a glance.
In each case, brand consultancy came before the interior design decisions, not after. Once the identity is understood, the retail design choices, from shopfitting to customer flow, follow from it rather than being bolted on.
Where this fits in the wider studio
Brand consultancy rarely stands alone. It usually runs alongside architecture, interior design, and retail design work delivered by the same team, which is covered in full on our services overview. To see how brand identity has played out across different sectors and clients, our portfolio is the best starting point. If you’re an Auckland business weighing up how your brand should show up in a physical space, that’s the conversation this service exists to have.