Harry Sabbarton Portfolio 2026

Brand System

Horizon Training and Consultancy were a small apprenticeship and functional skills provider. A small and dynamic team, their primary USP was their exam success rate - an incredible 98% first time pass rate. They hired me as their sole marketing resource in charge of visual identity, branding and marketing output.

Year

2025

Client

Horizon

Service

Brand Identity

Location

Essex

Context | Challenge | Constraints

Context: Small up and coming education sector business that needs to look as big as their reputation. Challenge: Horizon had no real existing brand identity, this had to be built from scratch. They had an aggressive outreach strategy that required visual assets ready on day one. Marketing collateral needed to reflect size that wasn't present in other aspects. Constraints: • Solo designer • Small business budget • No existing brand equity • Fast turnaround

My Role

As the sole designer brought onto Horizon, the role covered the full scope of a rebrand rather than one piece of it, discovery, concept, design and rollout, all sitting with one person rather than split across a team. There was no creative director to sense-check direction and no separate strategist to hand off a brief to, so both roles had to be worn at once, setting the strategic reasoning behind each decision, then executing it to a professional standard without either side being neglected. Horizon needed more than a logo refresh. As a small apprenticeship and functional skills provider competing against colleges and training providers with far longer histories, the business needed an identity that could carry credibility it hadn't yet earned through reputation alone. That meant treating every touchpoint, wordmark, typography, colour system, stationery and merchandise, as part of one targeted argument for why the business deserved to be taken seriously, rather than designing the elements in isolation and hoping they'd cohere later. Building consistency from scratch without existing brand equity to draw on and no internal design resource beyond one person, was the core of the job.

Process

The tagline came first, and the mark was built from it rather than around it. Early sketches illustrated the door and the horizon as two separate elements, which read as two ideas sharing a page rather than one thought carried by a single mark, so the brief narrowed to one question: what does the brand look like built from a doorway rather than decorated with one. The gap between the R and the H's vertical stroke became that doorway once the negative space was treated as the actual subject rather than leftover room around the letters. Several widths were tested before landing on one narrow enough to still read as a letterform, but open enough to register as a threshold. The dot above the i took longer to resolve. As a standard dot, "only horizons" had nothing to hold onto visually. Turning it into a rising sun closed that gap without adding a second symbol, letting both halves of the tagline share one piece of geometry instead of being stitched together across the wordmark. None of this needs conscious recognition to work. The concept sits underneath the logo rather than announced by it, which is what keeps the mark reading as simple and confident rather than needing the tagline to explain it.

Decisions

The door shape within the logo came from the negative space inside the H rather than sitting as copy underneath the logo, so the "no borders" idea survives even when the mark shrinks to an app tile or cap embroidery where a full wordmark won't hold.

Sifonn does most of the persuasion work. Training providers usually default to rounded, friendly sans serifs, which was the wrong instinct here. A condensed slab with sharp terminals reads closer to a university crest than a bootcamp logo, and that mattered more than warmth given the client's real differentiator was a 98% pass rate.

Colour took the opposite approach. Charcoal and teal keep the palette from tipping into hazard-sign orange-and-black, while warm sand gives the darker applications room to breathe. Saturation stayed restrained rather than poster-bright, since fabric and print both dull colour in ways screens don't.

Against that restraint, the icon pattern was left deliberately irregular. A perfectly aligned repeat reads as wallpaper; a slightly uneven one reads as art direction, which mattered for a brand with no existing visual equity to lean on.

Started with the tagline, "No Borders. Only Horizons," and let the logo grow out of it, literally.

The opening door reads as the "no borders" idea, a newly unlocked option for prospective students, and it's topped with a rising sun for "only horizons," giving it a glow from inside the doorway.

The bold, overlapping lettering came from wanting the wordmark to feel confident rather than tidy. From there the palette followed the concept: orange and warm sand carry the sun/horizon warmth, deep teal and charcoal ground it so it doesn't tip into feeling like a lifestyle brand. Sifonn for typography, bold, a bit architectural, holds up at icon scale as well as on a letterhead.

Once the system was locked I stress-tested it across applications. Merch, stationery, app icon etc, to make sure the logo and pattern held together outside of a static brand sheet.

Outcome | Reflection

Outcome: Since the rebrand rolled out alongside the wider marketing push, Horizon has grown from a small, local training provider to one of the more recognisable names in the market. Within the first 2 years they achieved 43% company growth, taking on large scale contracts, such as The Church of England, London School of Economics and Cambridge Universities. Reflection: Looking back, the typography decision was the right one to lead with. Sharpening it up gave the brand enough backbone to sit alongside more established competitors without losing the sense that there were real people behind it and getting that balance right early made every decision after it a lot easier, since colour and layout could then afford to be a little warmer without undoing the credibility the type had already built. Seeing the identity applied across merchandise was the moment the project felt genuinely successful rather than simply complete. A logo can look resolved on screen and still fall apart on a cap or a bottle, so watching it hold its shape and sharpness across those surfaces was confirmation the system had been built properly rather than just designed well. The client response was the most satisfying part. Feedback from returning clients kept coming back to the branding unprompted, which isn't something a designer can engineer directly, only set up the conditions for. That the identity is remembered and referenced rather than simply accepted was (in the end) the best sign the work achieved what it was meant to.

Tools + Deliverables

Tools: Illustrator InDesign Photoshop Premier Pro Deliverables: Full brand identity pack Branded stationery Branded website Branded merchandise Marketing and exhibition assets