This post is continued from The Importance of Branding: Part Three

The branding refresh: what is it?

A “refresh” refers to a designer working with an existing logo to update, improve, or expand upon it. Rather than a complete redesign or new name, this is an updated look. You might choose a branding refresh because your existing logo isn’t simple enough to reproduce well on certain uses (black and white, signage, etc.) You could also do a refresh when your brand feels dated or inappropriate for your business’s latest direction. You can also choose a refresh as a more cost-effective way to expand on cheap or self-created initial branding.

Sometimes at the Pixel Foundry, we’ve gone ahead and done a branding refresh for clients who have naively-designed logos or aren’t able to supply a vector format for us to work with. Sometimes it’s because the initial logo and the new direction we’re taking the brand in with other design work (website, brochure, etc) feels disconnected and disharmonious. It’s this level of care and attention to the brand that’s the mark of a good designer or studio.

Provided logo for an interior designer

Example: Kate Moore, interior designer

Kate had originally commissioned me to help her with her portfolio layout. When I asked about branding, she’d already created a logo for herself featuring a photograph she took of a bird in flight plus her name. Thing was, I couldn’t actually open the logo file – she made it in Microsoft Word and I didn’t have the fonts. The only version I had of her logo was a scanned image (above.)

I needed a vector logo to work with for Kate’s branding. To create her logo refresh, I traced the bird image to create a graphic element to use in the logo. Then I typeset her name using fonts similar to the ones she’d already chosen. The result is similar in tone and design to her original, self-created logo, but it is now cleaner and in a vector format she can use with any software for any print use.

Branding refresh: an updated, cleaner look

Example: Silver Lady Limousines

(Note: This project is still in the development stages at the time of this writing.) We were commissioned to design a new website look and feel for this luxury limousine company based out of Burnaby. We felt the supplied logos, created in Photoshop, could use a refresh.

Aside from not being vector format, the existing branding had problems when used on a website. The “SILVER lady” text didn’t read cohesively as a single name. The “Limousine & Luxury S.U.V.” text isn’t readable at all when the logo is at a small size. We wanted a clean, elegant aesthetic for the website, but the logo felt a bit busy.

For the refresh (there was no budget so we didn’t spend much time on this,) we wanted the logo to say more about what they do. The chrome elements and oblique text were inspired by the chrome hood ornaments of luxury cars. While the spirit of the original logo is kept, we hope this refreshed logo says more about quality and sophistication of the business.

Silver Lady Limos: Branding before and after