The Rebrand

As designers, we may end up having to rebrand our own business maybe once or twice if that. However, depending on the type of work we're doing, chances are we will find ourselves assisting in the rebrand of other companies. What is a rebrand you ask? Well, a rebrand is when a company, for whatever reason, be it they're failing or they feel they want a fresher look, chooses to change their look and/or public image.

As noted in this article here, there are three steps to a rebrand.  Those steps are:

1. Reevaluate the brand--Take a look at what you have at the moment. Is your company growing with the times or is it stagnant and falling behind? Do people currently have a fairly negative view of your brand?
2. Plan the change--What needs to change? Perhaps it's time to completely redo your website, or come up with a new, fresher logo. Come up with the plan of attack here.
3. Follow through with the plan--Make your plans a reality. Streamline that website so that your customers can navigate, while still keeping it visually appealing. Come up with that new logo so that people have a new image come to mind (and hopefully an even better public image) when they see your logo or hear your name.

As designers, if we have the opportunity to do a rebrand, chances are we will be making use of all three of these steps. Someone will come along saying "Hey, I want to remake my company image," and you as the designer will get the ultimate joy of doing all of the work (most likely just to have them want to change the best part) with little thanks (though we do get paid, which is the point). As we work with the customer we'll take a look at what they have, make a plan, and then follow through with it. The linked site goes through the process quite well.

Lately, quite a few major companies have gone through rebrands of their own.

Walmart (2008) for example:

In Pepsi's (2008) case they've had quite a few over the years:

Then we've got Target (2006) , Starbucks (2011) , and McDonald's (2012 product wise) :

Over the course of the past 8 years there have been quite a few rebrands. Some nowhere near as successful as a few of these (go look up the Gap rebrand for an example) and some that work extremely well. With all of these, a designer had their hand in the visual update. Who knows, perhaps one of us will have a hand in the next major Starbucks update.

Sources:

http://www.smpspittsburgh.org/brand-rescue-benefits-rebrand/ (rebranding info)

http://www.finnegan.com/resources/articles/articlesdetail.aspx?news=cd8838bc-d3b0-4c91-a53e-00e690430803 (dates and further rebranding info)

http://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=35147 (more dates)

https://www.logaster.com/blog/target-logo/ (Target logo update date)