Has your brand evolved? In today’s fast-paced environment, where industry trends and consumer preferences are rapidly evolving, so too must brands to stay relevant and maintain a competitive edge. Approximately 94% of consumers attribute their perception of a brand to its visual elements (Pal 2023), underscoring the need for businesses to evolve alongside the market’s expectations.
At Adlab, we understand the importance of evolving your brand. With over 40 years of experience, our team has played an integral role in helping our clients grow by creating a refreshing image that continues to reflect the brand their consumers know and love. Drawing on our work for Enhanced Lifestyles and SACA, this blog will explore our step-by-step approach to evolving our clients’ brands, enabling them to thrive in their respective market.
Brand Evolution: Adlab’s Process
Step 1: Client Communication
The initial step of Adlab’s brand evolution process involves communicating with our client. Specifically, assessing their brief to understand their:
- Current issues, and/or needs
- Goals and objectives
- Budget and project deadline.
This communication is vital for developing clear expectations and ensuring we are on the same page with our client’s needs.
Step 2: Review
Drawing from our client’s brief, we now enter the pivotal research stage. Here, our team assesses the business’ brand to develop a deeper understanding, identifying their strengths and potential areas for improvement.
A polished and relevant brand creates favourable first impressions that drive consumer engagement (Graphics Zoo 2024; Kabir 2023; Muavia 2023). As such, this review is critical for determining the best direction our graphic design team must take to achieve the best possible outcome for our client.
Step 3: Research
Before commencing the design process, our team will conduct essential research to fully immerse ourselves in our client’s brand, and gain a profound understanding of:
- Who they are?
- Their current/past branding strategies
- What content resonates most effectively with their audience?
It is important for visual branding to reflect a business’ values, mission, and personality to foster consumer trust and brand credibility (Kabir 2023; Muavia 2023). As such, this research step serves as an essential method for understanding our client on a deeper level, while also crafting distinct ideas that will captivate their target audience.
Step 4: Design
With a framework established through communication, brand review, and comprehensive research, our design journey begins. Here, we start evolving our client’s brand to craft solutions that deeply resonate and impact their market. This is often achieved through the following refinement processes:
Simplification
Simplification, as the name suggests, involves stripping away any unnecessary complexity in the design, and crafting a cleaner, more compact image. This may include altering the:
- Colour scheme
- Font
- Sizing & arrangement
- Design elements.
Take this logo Adlab created for our client, Enhanced Lifestyles, for example:
Using the simplification approach, we refined their brand by eliminating the orange outline which clashed with the blue/white colour scheme. We also reduced the font thickness and removed the “enabling independence” text to prevent visual clutter and ensure all elements complement each other. Lastly, we refined the figures, gently curving the edges and introducing a white outline to enhance their prominence.
It’s important to highlight that the contrast between the original and refined logo design is minimal. This is crucial to our process to ensure our design maintains aspects of the original brand, so it will continue to be recognised by Enhanced Lifestyles’ consumers.
Modernisation
Modernisation represents another facet of brand evolution, often conducted by businesses that have adhered to the same branding for a long time. Similar to the simplification approach, it is imperative to retain some elements of the original branding to resemble our client’s identity and foster a sense of trust and credibility (Kabir 2023; Muavia 2023). However, this process is about taking the design a step further, to ensure it is updated, and capable of captivating markets in the current context. Consider our work for the South Australian Cricket Association (SACA):
From Adlab’s initial communication with SACA, we were informed of the need to modernise their logo (which has been used for decades), to more closely resemble the shape and concept of Cricket Australia — the larger cricket body of which SACA is associated. Here, we also saw an opportunity to enhance additional elements (i.e., text & Piping Shrike), to give them a more modern feel.
We began evolving/modernising the brand by transitioning the circular shape into Cricket Australia’s current shield shape, while still utilising the red and yellow colour scheme iconic to South Australian cricket. Further, we slightly enhanced the Piping Shrike’s wingspan, polished the design and, like the original concept, embedded it within the shield with the yellow stumps to amplify their visual impact and distinguish it from the original design. Lastly, we removed the separation between the SACA letters and introduced a bolder, contemporary font to compliment the new design and draw consumers’ eyes to the text.
Throughout this entire process, it is also crucial for our team to maintain a balance of legibility, personality, brand coherence, and communication! It’s a collaborative endeavor, one where we can pitch our unique ideas while gaining the feedback of our valued clients. This builds the foundation of our entire design process, allowing us to not only meet but exceed their expectations.
Does My Brand Need to Evolve?
Not sure if your brand needs to evolve? Ask yourself these questions:
- Does the branding reflect the future you’re heading towards, or still the past?
- Is the design outdated (compared to your competitors?)
- Are your mission/values still recognisable?
- Can your target audience still recognise who you are?
Do you believe your business needs more than this? Then it might be time for an entire rebrand! For more information, don’t hesitate to contact us at: https://adlab.com.au/contact/
Closing Statement:
To conclude, brand evolution is not a quick process, but a continuous journey — one marked by collaboration, creativity, refinement, and an unwavering dedication to excellence. At Adlab, we understand this process, and are here to help every one of our clients continue to evolve, to impact their markets and achieve greatness.
Want to evolve your brand? Contact us today: at: https://adlab.com.au/