Several clients and prospective clients have come to us recently with the notion of redesigning their current firm “look” to modernize it, make it more recognizable, or provide more flexibility on the firm’s future marketing materials. While these can all be good reasons for a redesign, it’s best to look past the surface variables and further explore your desire to refresh your look.
Before automatically looking for the redesign, consider what you are trying to get out of the new look. If you are looking to recreate your brand, expand into a new market, or exponentially grow in a rapid fashion, a redesign may be in order. But if you’re just bored of your look or wish it was easier to work with, you may want to consider other alternatives. Refreshing your logo could make you unrecognizable to your clients and could create a reverse of what you are aiming for.
We saw this situation occur this week, when Seattle’s Best Coffee revealed its redesigned logo. The complex and recognizable logo has been “dumbed-down” and streamlined, presumably to make it easier to use on future marketing materials. Initial critics politely say the simplified design is rather generic and makes the coffee brand undistinguishable from other brands.
Seattle’s Best is looking to expand to more than 30,000 locations by the end of the fiscal year, and a spokesperson from the company is quoted as saying the company “want(s) (the new logo) to be a universal sign for good coffee someday.” Can Seattle’s Best pull this off? It will be interesting to see how it plays out, because, as we’ve told our clients…it’s not necessarily about the look, but rather what you do with it.