Just like your spice cabinet, where herbs and spices can lose their freshness, your brand can go stale. If you’re an established company, your brand can benefit from an honest, thorough evaluation on a regular basis, scheduled just like a regular financial analysis (or spice cupboard cleaning). Whether you find that something about your brand mission or logo doesn’t feel true to the direction of your organization or you’ve undergone a dramatic change in your business structure, services or products, rebranding may be in order.
Identifying the change in your brand as a whole will provide the information to make a corresponding visual change. Some companies may stick with a trusted style and design that has fit them for 100 years, but a change in the direction or focus of a company should be reflected outwardly with an updated brand and logo.
Common rebranding projects include:
Refining your brand guidelines
If your brand guidelines already include your logo, a color palette, typography, styles for photographs and illustrations, and key concepts to guide your company marketing and development then you are ahead of 90% of business owners out there. Your rebranding may be a matter of small changes to make your logo or style guide more effective.
If, instead, you often come across questions for how to use your logo, struggle to fit your logo into common applications, or have trouble finding ways to express your brand across different media, your brand guide may need some work. Adding logo variations to create a versatile family, creating examples of the images and text that best portray the brand, and more can be incredibly helpful in building cohesive messaging and a clear identity for your customers.
Replacing a placeholder logo for a startup with a more mature brand expression
Many companies start with a low-budget logo that suits their needs at the time and of whose idiosyncrasies they grow fond, but as you grow and change, the old logo may not be putting your best foot forward. Replacing a small, pixelated JPG logo with a fresh, vector version provides better scalability and reproduction at all sizes, from tiny app icon to a billboard.
Updating outdated colors, styles, or typography
The default font on your computer might have made a great logo when you first selected it, but now, hundreds of companies may use that same typeface, and it may no longer stand out. Worse, dated styles can put an expiration date on your brand that may be off-putting to customers. Rebranding offers an opportunity to replace dated styles with more timeless elements, pick a unique logotype from the tens of thousands available, and correct any unintentional implied messages.
Simplifying and abstracting a complicated logo
A great example of this rebrand is the ubiquitous Starbucks: from brown, engraved mermaid to simple green circle, their logo has been simplified incrementally. The symbolism of the bare breasted siren who lures sailors to their death on the rocks has been slowly replaced by the calm, ever-present green mermaid who promises delicious drinks with consistent and friendly service. While many customers and some in the design community complained about the loss of the original logo’s unique flavor (and similar qualities in their coffee and tea), the visual changes in the Starbucks logo reflect the company’s growing popularity and expansion around the world.
In summary, the best way to know if your company is ready for rebranding is by regularly and honestly evaluating your brand, logo and style guide for opportunities to better express your message. Feedback from your company’s team, customers and trusted professionals about how your brand can be more effective will be well worth the time and effort.
Want to see our rebranding in action? Check out our favorite rebranding projects: