Hosted Here
Project Details: Brand Strategy, Identity Design, Campaign Design, Stationery Design, Operational Design
Overview
This time, the client was us.
For 12+ years, Round 3 has hosted the websites we build. Quietly, personally, and as real people you can actually reach. Meanwhile, most small-business sites in Canada live on servers run by big US companies. Cold, faceless and nameless. When something breaks, you get a ticket number and cold, impersonal and underwhelming replies, increasingly generated by some AI bot.
As more and more Canadians started looking harder at where their dollars go, we knew we wanted to provide something a bit deeper than most of what’s out there.
Hosted Here puts the promise right in the name. Your website lives on Canadian soil, billed in Canadian dollars and looked after by people who know you. “Bring your website home” became the line everything grew from.
We built the Hosted Here brand identity to feel like the opposite of big hosting. Retro vibes that feel safe, full of care and somewhat familiar. The HH mark is clean, recognisable, and simple. We kept the entire experience free of the usual tech specs, data speeds, ubiquitous uptime guarantees, and the like, and instead focused on communicating care, simplicity and ease. The voice is warm, plain and a little cheeky. More neighbour than help desk.
From there, the brand went out into the world on hostedhere.ca, launching with a Seaside Magazine ad, and a few postcards around town to keep things light and easy.
The result is hosting with personality. Something we found totally lacking in the space. Rooted here, and ready to bring websites home.
