Chapter five. Skirting the hazards of a redesign

When clients approach designers for brand identity projects, the work will generally fall into one of two categories. They represent either a newly established company in need of a new identity or an already established company that needs its identity redesigned or refined.

If your project falls into the first category—designing from scratch—the process is more straightforward, because there’s no brand equity for the designer and client to consider. But if you’ve been asked to complete a redesign, the stakes are much higher, for both you and your client. Think about it. Which scenario is potentially more damaging: Nike ditching its internationally recognized “swoosh” logo in favor of, say, the outline of a shoe, or a new business named “Pete’s” commissioning a visual identity to help sell its custom t-shirts? Because of Nike’s stature, stock, and visibility in the marketplace, the potential for damage to the company’s identity is much greater.

That said, a redesign project tends to be much more lucrative for the designer than creating a design from scratch. Because established companies need to be protective of the equity they have already built around their identity, a lengthier, more stringent design process is required. Every decision needs more thought, more discussion, more time.

Let’s take a look at an instance where designing a new identity to replace a well-established one had unintended and punishing consequences.

“We had always depicted the outside of an orange. What was fascinating was that we had never actually shown the product—the juice itself,” said Peter Arnell, founder and CEO of the Arnell Group.

Those who are familiar with the Tropicana brand know that PepsiCo for years had used the idea of a “straw stuck in an orange” to promote the premium juice product. Consumers were used to it—those who were loyal customers of the brand could easily spot the packaging when they went grocery shopping.

Hindsight’s a wonderful thing, but was it really necessary to visually remind Tropicana’s customers what this “product called the juice” looked like?

In comparing the two identities, it’s obvious that the redesign is more diluted, with an almost generic look to it. The full brand name is Tropicana Pure Premium, so perhaps this dilution of brand equity was a conscious decision on the part of the company and designer. According to the Private Label Manufacturers Association, one of every five items sold in the United States is what’s considered a “generic” store brand.¹

1 Private Label Manufacturers’ Association. “Store Brands Achieving New Heights of Consumer Popularity and Growth,” http://plma.com/storeBrands/sbt09.html

Despite the fact that Tropicana is considered a premium juice, maybe the company wanted to align its product with the more generic juice packaging of store labels?

Whatever the case, the rebranding didn’t work. After the new packaging was put on supermarket shelves, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20 percent in less than two months,² costing PepsiCo $33 million in lost sales.³ Within two months of unveiling the new identity in early 2009, the company bowed to consumer demand by reverting to the old packaging.

2 AdAge.com. “Tropicana Line’s Sales Plunge 20% Post-Rebranding,” April 2, 2009.

3 BrandingStrategyInsider.com. “Tropicana’s Costly Listening Lesson,” April 15, 2009, www.brandingstrategyinsider.com/2009/04/tropicanas-costly-lesson-in-listening-.html

Today the Tropicana product line continues to grow following the 2012 launch of Tropicana Farmstand in the U.S. and the 2013 launch of Trop50 in the U.K.

When you’re working on a project in which a client with a well-established identity is seeking a redesign, ask at the outset whether any focus groups established the need. If they haven’t, suggest that quizzing existing and potential customers about their perceptions of the brand should be the first order of business.

Some studios and agencies offer to set up focus groups as part of their services. If you feel that your schedule can’t accommodate doing likewise, or focus group research just isn’t your thing, consider bringing a specialist onboard to get the job done.

Let’s take a look at a more justified redesign project.

At the end of 2013, I was hired to give Rupp a fresh, more appropriate visual appearance.

When I was starting out as a designer, I probably would’ve jumped straight into a complete redesign, wiping the slate clean and starting from scratch, but that would have ignored decades of brand equity and an 80 percent brand recognition rate. The most appropriate direction was to build upon what was already in place, retaining the equity behind the visual.

Even if a black-only version of the logo won’t be used, it’s important to create a design that works using a single color. By doing so you’re focusing on form, and your client’s customers remember shape just as much as color (if not more so).

In addition to the logo, I crafted a custom hand-drawn typeface to help with the friendlier feel, before finally presenting the work in a variety of relevant contexts.

I sketched each character before digitizing the set to add a more personal, handcrafted touch.

JCJ Architecture, a U.S.-based design firm that provides architectural and interior services, commissioned designer Armin Vit of UnderConsideration to refresh its brand identity. The company needed not only an updated identity, but one that could also easily conform to any number of marketing applications.

The firm’s old wordmark made use of the venerable Helvetica Neue and was used in all of JCJ’s identity materials.

Helvetica Neue is a well-crafted typeface that was originally digitized in 1983 and is based on the design of the original and popular Helvetica, created in 1957. Except for some overly tight kerning, there’s nothing dramatically wrong with JCJ Architecture’s old wordmark. But there was a period in the early nineties when it seemed like every new design used it. Armin Vit agreed with his client that a typeface rooted in the twenty-first century was a more appropriate direction.

The design works because, first, it helps JCJ stand out from all those other Helvetica Neue wordmarks, and second, it modernizes the client’s visual identity. The distinctive red color of the lettering was retained, so the equity built around the old design remains intact.

In 1990, Chermayeff & Geismar & Haviv (CGH, formerly Chermayeff & Geismar) was asked to design an identity for the new combined company, HarperCollins Publishers.

Harper & Row’s symbol depicted hands passing a torch—a classical allusion to the dissemination of knowledge—and had been updated and redesigned since its first introduction in 1845.

William Collins was represented by a symbol of a fountain, another classical Greek allusion to the idea of wisdom as a fount or spring. It was drawn with a substantial plinth, a wide dish, and multiple jets of water forming a tall semicircle—a distinctive, yet complex image.

“An important part of the job, as was relayed to us, was to retain as much as possible of both the Harper and the Collins identities, each of which had built enormous reputational equity over the centuries,” said CGH.

The existing symbols of the two companies were much too detailed and complex for CGH to simply combine them. Instead, they turned to one of the most essential principles of modernism: reduction—not only in form but also in concept.

“In place of the references of torch and fountain, we extracted the essential element of each symbol: the fountain became water and the torch simply fire.”