In 2009

In the wonderfully wild and beautiful Outer Hebrides, in Scotland, Black House Creative a branding, packaging and design agency, was born. Born out of a desire to run a creative agency the way we wanted to run it, work with the kind of clients we wanted to work with. After 20 years of working in the creative sector for someone else on blue chip accounts, it was time to do it ourselves and do it our way. Starting a business is never easy, but starting a creative design business on a remote and rural Scottish Island without any support network was challenging.

Carbon Footprint

We chose to reduce our carbon footprint and not expect the whole team to move to the Outer Hebrides and developed our remote working model, yes back in 2009 when it wasn’t cool, which meant we had everyone working happily in their own environment, be that in England, Bermuda, mainland Scotland or the Outer Hebrides. We were having remote video team meetings long before Zoom came along.

Black House Creative

We thought about the name, we wanted something that gave the business provenance, gave it stand out but at the same time linked us to the community we were living and working in.

Black House: after the old croft houses in the area, small one roomed stone buildings which the crofters of old lived in and shared with their animals. A place of safety and security against everything that nature threw at them and we wanted our clients to feel safe and secure in the knowledge that we would look after them. Creative: a nod to what we do.

So straight-away we had a reason behind the name, a story in itself.

Move forward to 2016

Richard and Paula took the decision to spread their wings to support our growth and established a second base in Yorkshire, they were originally Tykes (an affectionate term for Yorkshire folk) and brought them closer to the rest of the team. For the last 8 years Black House Creative had worked via word of mouth in Scotland, in Yorkshire no-one knew us and we were now competing against the well-established agencies of Leeds, Manchester and Sheffield, we did have a few things in our favour: we are brilliant at what we do, we are competitive on price and we have the right accent!

We keep a firm foothold in the Highlands and Islands where we have a strong client base. We are and always will be, a Scottish Branding Packaging and Design Agency.

In 2017

We scooped two International Creative Design awards, and the awards have kept coming ever since.

Our Creative Director

Since 2010 Richard has worked as a Consultant for a Scottish Government based agency working with businesses across the Highlands and Islands region on their future growth and development, his forte of course is Branding, Packaging and Design and more recently, Innovation. This has seen him offering advice and guidance across a broad spectrum of businesses from Aquaculture to Bakeries, Breweries, Candlemakers, Chocolatiers, Cheesemakers, Distillers, Energy and Renewables, Community Groups, Electronics, Engineering Companies and even Polytunnels. In fact we’ve put a lot of his advice into our blog.

2023

15 years have flown by and we have had a great time along the way. We have found our niche, we are specialists in branding, packaging and design, in fact we excel in this area. The Food and Drink arena is a particular favourite for us. We have worked on collaborations with some of our contacts to help raise their own profiles and often consult on projects for them. These collaborations are good for all parties concerned and mean that we can strengthen each other’s offerings, which is of great benefit to our clients.

Everything we do has one aim, to make our clients businesses stand out and engage with their target audience. You can see examples of our work here.

This is our story to date and there are many more chapters to come.