Updating your visual identity while maintaining brand recognition and consistency.

Have you considered updating your brand but failed to get started for fear of losing brand recognition in the market? Although this reservation is valid, a stagnating brand can do your business and its positioning in the market even more harm.

A strong brand is constantly evolving in order to stay relevant to the target audience and market conditions. This doesn’t have to involve changing direction in the core purpose and messaging, but a brand’s visual identity and communications strategy must adapt to its environment and that includes an increasingly complex media landscape in which companies now compete for brand recognition A brand must identify and respond to changes in customer need in order to establish increasingly meaningful brand relationships with the target market. Subtle changes to an existing identity over time are key to its modernisation without loss of established brand recognition.

The evolution of a logo will typically maintain consistent elements, with only a slight variation of one element throughout e.g. a variation on typeface, adding of depth, colour, movement. Consider the evolution of the Pepsi brand. Pepsi’s original logo was red script on white. Pepsi introduced a red, white and blue round bottle cap to their design in 1950. They swapped the fancy script for clean black lettering in 1962. The bottle-cap stylised into a circle with coloured stripes by 1972 and as of 2011, the striped circle stands alone as Pepsi’s logo. But at no time did Pepsi completely drop the red from the logo, or the positioning of the word Pepsi.

A sudden dramatic change to an existing visual identity can potentially alienate existing consumers and damage brand equity, so a planned approach to the launch and cut-over phase is critical. All stakeholders including employees, consumers and clients must have adequate time to familiarise with the revitalised logo before another change is considered.When revising a brand, considerations may include: versatility and usability, relevance to the current market, position an dtaglines, cross media application.

Lumino have worked on many brand refresh projects. Most recently with the Cardno brand to ensure the logo more appropriately reflects the size and global presence of the company giving the company credibility in the market. See the case study Brand recognition is a key element in building brand equity, so in any brand refresh project maintaining some core elements and a staged approach to it’s introduction is often the best strategy. If you’re wondering if it`s time for a change, ask yourself these questions:

Have your customers needs, habits, likes and dislikes changed?

Has the environment you operate in changed and evolved?

Does your logo, typeface and general look seem dated?If you answered yes to any of these questions, then odds are it`s time for a brand refresh to maintain relevance in the eyes of your customers. Building brand equity is a balance between relevance, recognition and consistency.

Lumino Brisbane is the author of this article on Brand Recognition. Find more information, about Branding here.