When it’s time for a brand refresh the first place that people often look is their logo. But it can be worth considering keeping your old logo and using your budget in a creative way to refresh everything else related to how your brand looks. This might seem like a strange suggestion but we have completed several projects where the client ended up with a new look and a more developed identity that worked better for them – while retaining their old logo.
A new logo with the same old problems
Consider the scenario, you have a logo for your company but most of your marketing material looks tired and dated. It’s easy to blame the logo, the logo must be the problem – “we need a new logo”. So you spend your budget on a new clean and modern logo. This works great where the logo appears on its own, such as signage, but everywhere else you will run into the same issues where your print and digital marketing material looks inconsistent and out of step with your brand.
Maximising your brand refresh budget
If you have the budget to cover a new logo and new branding support elements, sample marketing material designs and a brand guideline then by all means proceed in this manner. However if you have enough budget for one or the other we strongly advise keeping your old logo and putting your spend to use with the supporting elements. You’ll be amazing how much better your logo will look when it’s sitting well with other new design elements such as improved typography and a refreshed colour palette. Your brand refresh rollout will also be smoother with the possibility of money saving where large signage and other graphics do not need to be full replaced.
Advantage of keeping your old logo
As well as the financial advantage outlined above you also have the advantage of familiarity with your current clients. Changing a logo can cause a negative reaction from loyal customers who dislike change. They tend to be much more receptive to changes that happen elsewhere in the visual representation of your brand such as brochures and website design.
Your logo design has caused specific problems in the past
We accept that there will be cases where the logo does need to be updated for technical reasons and we would take this into consideration when completing the brand refresh. Examples of this includes a logo that was originally designed as a jpeg so a vector version for professional print is not available, a logo that can not sit over an image, a logo that will not work in small or portrait/landscape orientations. In these cases a “tidied-up” version of the logo would be created by us along with additional official versions for different applications to ensure consistency and a professional look overall.
Your old logo with your problems fixed
If you feel more open to maintaining your old logo yet arming yourself with a whole new visual toolkit we can help. If you’re still not convinced we have several examples that show just how successful this approach has been for several of our clients.
If you would like us to send you more information on any of the above examples please let us know. hello@anneandco.ie
