That Brand-New Brand Smell

Take a deep breath. Smell that? It’s your brand. And it better be fresh. Your “brand” is the way someone instantly feels about your product/company when they hear the name or see it. That being said, the world changes, people change, perceptions change, therefore brands must change. What appealed to people in 1995 (Hootie and the Blowfish, for instance) is no longer appealing to people today. If music, movies and fashion have to change on a regular basis, why shouldn’t brands?

A Creative Director at Landor once said that a good logo can go 10 years between major overhauls, max, but should have minor maintenance done every three years. Yes, that is scary. And sometimes expensive. But so is becoming outdated in the minds of consumers. It has gotten to the point where consumers almost expect a redesign every so often or it begins to affect their perception of the brand.

This is especially true with food and beverages. No one wants to think that their favorite pizza, fast food or soda is old and stale. Soft drinks have reached the point of almost quarterly logo maintenance or redesigns. The Burger King logo redesign (Sterling Brands) was, in our opinion, one of the best brand refreshes and became the leader in the fast food chain brand redesigns.

Big, bold corporate entities can’t feel massive and cold anymore like they could in the past. In order to connect with the newly apprehensive and economically damaged consumers, they must feel non-threatening, casual, friendly and neighborly. Therefore, now more than ever, brands need to adapt in order to stay relevant. We see this in the recent strand of brand refreshes.

Over the last few years, almost all of the remaining classic corporate logos were redesigned. Designs by legends like Saul Bass and Paul Rand have been replaced. All caps has been replaced by lowercase. Corporate blue has been replace by fresh, bright, happy and environmentally friendly colors. Squares and sharp corners have been replaced by rounded corners and flourishes. 2-D and flat logos now have dimension, highlights, and reflections. Even taglines have shifted tones.

What’s interesting about the updating, refreshing and redesigning of logos is that as a rule, most graphic designers and industry professionals absolutely hate redesigned or refreshed logos. (Even though it is what they encourage their clients to do.) If you don’t believe us check out a few design blogs. There are some jaded and cocky little designers out there. They always “liked the original more.” I guess we are the exception to the rule, because about 80% of the time, we like newly updated brands and logos.

We even secretly love several redesigned logos that most people loathe. Regardless if we like the type, mark and color of a logo, we like change and really admire a company that is willing to evolve.  I guess it’s because we’re a huge fan of before-and-afters. And we love the fresh smell of a new brand.

A few of the good ones: (*We’re starring the ones we’ll get crap for)

BP (Landor)
Burger King (Sterling Brands)
*AT&T (Interbrand)
Discovery Channel (Viewpoint Creative)
*Wal-Mart (Lippincott)
Sprint (Lippincott)
UPS (Futurebrand)
*Xerox (Interbrand)
CitiBank (Pentagram)
*Animal Planet (Dunning Eley Jones)
*Jack in the box  (Duffy & Partners)

A good site to bookmark: http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew