I’m working on slight upgrades to my identity. That includes short run business/promotional cards. It’s fun to update your brand’s identity from year to year. You just have to decide how much you are willing to change. A slight upgrade in color or logo appearance keeps the recognition of your company consistent.
However, there are examples of identities completely revamping their appearance (like brand identities for food, soft drinks or equipment). It can work against the company brand, depending on the strategy. The strategy for Pepsi products is to refresh/re-invent their soft drinks for more consumption. Which does not seem to be working since Coca Cola is still the top soft drink in the world and their logo and bottle shape has relatively been the same for over a hundred years.
For creative agencies, there is a little more freedom. Some agencies like Space 150, redesign their identity every 150 days. Re-branding does have environmental and brand equity questions about whether it’s worth it for paper resources, design-work and promotion to do it so often. Space 150 does this as a way of showing off their specialty in reinventing brands and their client list is impressive as a result. Either way, if you want to grow steadily with your brand identity, make gradual changes until you feel you are ready to launch an all together different appearance.
This can also coincide with any changes within your services. For instance if you have been a print designer for a number of years, but recently your clients are more and more relying on your e-commerce and social media web development for campaigns and websites. At this juncture you may want to rethink how your logo and brand identity reflect your evolution.
My suggestion is to keep it simple.
Think of the following three to help you simplify:
1. Color
2. Fonts
3. Message/service visual representation
(ONE) Choose a simple color scheme to identify your presence. You can be subjective to a point with choosing colors. If your service is pet grooming and you love purples, pinks and oranges – choose one of those colors and pair it up for contrast with black or white. This way you can play with the negative space black/white create and add a bright color for quick attention. For Cleis Design, I’m in love with black and a this crazy blue (PMS 7459c). Choosing Pantone Colors at the beginning of this process will save you the time of having to convert web or cmyk/rgb mixes.
How many colors you choose is up to you. Just remember more than two colors and you may have to start thinking of what these colors represent for your business, services or market and how you visually will use them. Larger corporations often use multiple colors to represent service distinction (one or more services can be identified selectively by color) or sector organization (this is used if you happen to own several different companies/franchises that offer different products/services while carrying your brand name). More than two colors and it gets complicated, possibly manageable..but complicated.
(TWO) Fonts, use consistently one or two fonts. And for clarity, choose one of the fonts from a sans serif family. As much as I love the ornate scripty/serif fonts, legibility is extremely important, so a nice Helvetica, Arial or tons of other unique sans serifs will mix well with presenting the most important messages and services you offer. Make the Sans Serif your dominant font and either use another style from the same font family or only use your serif font strategically (and minimally) to break up large chunks of information on a web site or in a brochure. Always create a style guide (branding guide) to help you and others you work with understand when to use these fonts in relation to emphasis.
(THREE) Message/service visual representation. Create a simple icon, type treatment or visual representation of who you are or what services you offer. You don’t have to visually represent all three, you can expand on the service portion within your support materials (web site/printed materials). If you are unsure, ask yourself the following questions:
Who are you and what do you represent?
Take the time to list what kind of business you are and what do you want to tell people about your business/self.
Are you literal about representing yourself?
Meaning, if for example you were a landscaping business, do you want to be represented by flowers or garden shears? Or are you open to creative interpretation like abstract shapes, objects that can be worked into type treatments, flourishes or fonts from classic time periods that refine your identity.
Once you have figured out these three elements out you can keep expanding and evolving. Just remember keep it simple.