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As far as graphic design in music goes, album covers usually get all the love. But what about band logos? Sometimes, they’re forgettable, but many have become iconic and instantly recognizable, whether poorly scrawled on a notebook or on a poster on a wall advertising an upcoming tour date. Some of the most familiar ones were made before computers and the advent of vector-manipulating graphic design software, which makes their impact all the more impressive!
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The OREO brand is making a triumphant return to the advertising scene with a fresh campaign to debut during the Super Bowl this weekend. Called “Twist on It,” the commercial captures the essence of OREO’s signature move – twisting open the cookie – and transforms it into a pivotal player in historical decisions. Kris Jenner even makes a cameo appearance, reflecting on her own past decision-making moments involving an OREO cookie. This clever ad highlights OREO’s enduring appeal and cultural relevance, and shows that even after 110 years, OREO remains a hit with fans.
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Designer Thomas Steele’s new book “Comic Sans, Is It Really That Bad?” dives into the infamous reputation of Comic Sans, with parallels between its polarizing status and other widely disliked phenomena like dad jokes or Crocs. Go on a journey of the font’s origin story, tracing back to Vincent Connare’s creation of it during his time at Microsoft, initially intended for a child-friendly interface. This excerpt of the book leaves you wanting more, and rethinking the knee jerk reaction to the typeface.
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From your logo to the icons used on your website, these elements (among many others) serve as part of your brand identity. Each piece exposes the business to new audiences while at the same time building goodwill and loyalty toward it.
When it’s time to rebrand, part of the goal is to reimagine the brand’s identity and preserve its essence. The other part revolves around ensuring the new identity serves your business objectives.
It’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of what the new brand should look like versus ensuring the final result represents what a business stands for.
However, having an objective voice in the room gives you the creative guidance needed to steer the redesign in the right direction. And partnering with a design agency delivers that voice.
Here are a few other advantages this collaboration gives you during a brand redesign.
Brand redesigns build off of what you have now, and working with an agency provides both creative chops and strategy so you can continue staying true to your audience.
The creative team makes decisions throughout the design process based on a brief that contains information about your business and its goals. But it doesn’t stop there.
The designers have to understand what people think about your business and its identity before being able to produce a new brand for it. As part of the process, they’ll continue to add to this by conducting more in-depth research into your current brand, which can include:
Armed with this knowledge, the creative team has another set of tools available to create an engaging brand identity with the power to attract more customers and form the connections that lead to sales.
Your brand identity separates your business from competitors who may want to move in on your customer base. With a distinctive brand, you can outshine them and be the company to think of first when they need it.
Understanding how your competitors operate in visual spaces gives you a clear path to establishing your brand as one people should pay attention to.
When partnering with a branding or graphic design agency, the team looks into your direct and indirect competitors to see how they:
After performing this competitive audit, the designers fully understand what other businesses are doing and how your current brand compares. They then use this information during the rebrand to differentiate your business so it stands out in a memorable way.
Design agencies approach brand redesigns strategically. Yes, part of their job is to produce a beautiful design, but it also has to serve a functional role. Every part of the new identity is designed to work both within and outside the brand system as a standalone element.
Studies show that people remember brand logos more than brand names. This means there’s an opportunity to capitalize on what people naturally do—process visuals more readily and quickly than text. Whether it’s the symbolism in a logo, the hues in a color palette, or the fonts chosen for the brand’s headlines and body copy, a lot of thought goes into how each component works together.
When working through the brand redesign, you’ll work closely with the design agency to ensure each piece represents your business and lends itself to be remembered.
Brand redesigns should produce tangible results. But how can you measure whether your rebrand was a success? Here are a few metrics that will help you determine the rebrand’s impact on your business.
Brand awareness: After the brand’s relaunch, website traffic, social media followers, and search volume are numbers to review since they provide information about how many eyes are on the new look and feel.
Customer engagement: Not every like leads to a sale, but it does help you to see how many people interact with the new brand. Paying attention to how people engage with your marketing can give insight into their response.
Brand perception: When in doubt, ask. Reviews, surveys, and other sentiment analyses can give you an idea of what people think about the new brand and if it resonates with them.
Financial performance: If you want to measure how well a rebrand has gone, you’ll need to look at your revenue and cost per acquisition (CPA). After the rebrand, if your revenue increases while your CPA decreases, it’s a good indicator that the rebrand was one of its driving forces.
When you can link your rebranding efforts with quantifiable results, it becomes easier to demonstrate their impact on your business.
Brand redesigns don’t happen in a vacuum. They require the collaboration of decision-makers and designers to create a stronger brand. These projects involve many moving parts and personalities, each competing to make their input heard and incorporated into the new identity.
Working with an agency whose expertise lies in brand design helps position your business to maintain a competitive edge and engage with customers more effectively.
Other companies that don’t take a strategic approach to brand redesign won’t have this advantage, allowing you to get more market share with a distinctive brand.
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Every brand identity project has a unique outcome and story, and each one deserves the attention it takes to reimagine the new brand.
We’ve previously discussed which questions to ask before hiring an agency to design your logo and how projects work from start to finish.
But one question needs more attention: How long does it take to redesign a brand?
Well, we have some answers for you. We’ll discuss the common pitfalls that can blow up timelines and how to avoid them.
Rebrands usually involve many opinions and even more tough decisions, both on the creative and business sides. A solid plan must be in place to ensure everyone can be proud of the final outcome.
However, two things can affect the trajectory of a company’s brand refresh.
Scope and complexity
Company rebrands can be as simple as updating a logo and color palette, which can take roughly four to six weeks to complete.
However, more complex projects usually have longer timelines. They often involve redesigning the logo, defining—and designing—a style guide, and creating the look and feel of each of the brand’s assets.
As a result, these projects can take upwards of a year or longer to finish because they involve multiple decision-makers, departments, and creative revisions.
Client Engagement
Streamlined feedback during a company rebrand keeps everyone focused on the project. The best way to keep things moving is to have one person in the company who collects and organizes feedback.
This person, often the owner, if it’s a smaller business, or the marketing manager or director for larger organizations, communicates with the agency’s account manager or creative lead. Then, the information gets disseminated to the rest of the creative team.
But when there’s a deviation from this, such as someone within the company side-stepping the point of contact to deliver their direct input or failing to respond entirely, this impacts the rebrand’s timeline—sometimes by a few days or weeks.
It goes without saying that brand redesigns have many moving parts. But remember these two things to avoid frustration with the project’s progression.
Transparency is your best friend
Who likes to be kept in the dark during a project? No one. Before embarking on a company’s brand identity design project, the creative lead at an agency meets with you to discuss your target relaunch date and goals so they can develop a schedule that meets realistic deadlines.
Throughout the process, they’ll communicate openly about the redesign’s status and address any questions or concerns before they become problems.
Embrace flexibility and compromise
Because life happens, there are times when you need some wiggle room in the schedule. For instance, if the company’s review process is supposed to take a week according to the agreed-upon schedule but actually takes three, the overall timeline for the redesign gets moved out.
Pushing the schedule out when there’s a delay helps retain the high-quality standards the client and the creative team want to maintain.
Sometimes, it takes an entire community to redesign a brand, which was the case for the Colquitt County School District in South Georgia.
KEYLAY rebranded it and its multiple elementary, middle, and high schools over 18 months. For this branding project, over 100 administrators, staff, teachers, and parents provided feedback through one point of contact.
What was their issue with the previous brand?
Different fonts. Inconsistent colors. Unofficial or nonexistent logos, depending on the school. The district wanted the new brand to be cohesive and updated to reflect educational excellence, their industrial past, and the local community.
So, what was our solution?
We brought in an illustrator to create new logos for all of the elementary schools and modernized the district’s beloved mascot: the Packer Hog.
Our team also redesigned the district’s crest and devised new brand standards to unite all the schools within the district.
We also worked through multiple iterations of the color palette and created a set of brand guidelines for people within and outside the school system. These guidelines would help ensure that any new materials produced for each school stayed consistent.
And then what happened?
After the rebrand, the community, school system, and its students had a reference they could use to make sure their new logos and mascot looked the same, whether they were printing signage, using online graphics, or ordering uniforms.
Overhauling a brand doesn’t happen overnight, but the end result is worth it, as brand redesigns reveal another facet of its personality.
The timeframe for completing this type of project largely depends on its complexity and maintaining open communication and transparency. But the best way to ensure it goes smoothly is to set realistic expectations from the beginning.
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