We don’t know where we’re going yet,
but we promise it won’t be boring.
At Journey, we pride ourselves in being brand storytellers as we bring brands to life through design. As such, we thought we’d peel back the curtain and tell you the story of our own brand re-launch.
The evolution of every brand is unique but it always comes down to a common goal – connecting with your audience. From naming and branding to graphic design and printed collateral, online presence and carefully curated content, everything lines up to tell your brand story.
But what happens when your brand identity no longer aligns with the story you’re trying to tell? Rebranding a company can be a bold move. But rebranding can also be extremely powerful–maybe even the most important long-term investment you make.
We recently found ourselves in this predicament. Over the years our services have expanded organically as we have undertaken new design challenges that have allowed us to expand beyond our roots in traditional print. Like many brands, over time our brand collateral looked less and less like who we are, and didn’t allow us to fully tell our own story. So, in mid-2022, we seized an opportunity to give the business a fresh and distinctive new look.
Our new logo — a symbol of moving forward and creative journeys — is the cornerstone of our new brand identity: a total rethink of how we present ourselves to the world. But more than that, it’s the end result of a year-long labour of love. And we feel pretty damn good about it.
But this isn’t just a “woo-hoo, we did it!” blog. This is a tale of how we got from Point A to Point B — a trail of breadcrumbs tracing our path, including lessons learned along the way and advice for other travellers.
It’s also about the keys to our success: a journey in its own right, to the core questions of who we are and what we stand for, and a commitment to forging our own path as we move forward.
Our rebranding process rolled out over several months in phases. You can expect the same steps in your own rebranding project:
Understanding who you are and what your brand story is will serve as your north star and guiding light. From there, it’s a journey in seeking inspiration, self-discovery, making mistakes, learning, adapting and improving along the way.
When we started our rebranding process, we set out on a mission to find a memorable, easy to pronounce, easy to spell name that would help us to tell a story. Journey reflects the essence of our service offering and relationship to our clients in one word.
We love that our new brand identity captures our channel-agnostic approach and ‘creative journey’ mindset in a way that is simple and distinctive. It was clear from the beginning that bold visuals and a distinct voice were needed to make a branding impact.
We got to work, developing a platform for the brand including core values, tone of voice and a brand narrative rooted in the direct notion of “Partnering our clients on their creative journeys”. With the brand established, we moved onto creating a customised icon, wordmark and brand identity system.
The primary icon is made up of a stylised ‘J’ made up of different ‘paths’ to represent the new name and communicate the idea of a creative journey. Unique colours and images can be used within the icon, reflecting the flexibility and adaptability of the agency, and the industry we work in. With a mission to drive brand recognition, it only made sense to use a bold, bright and optimistic colour palette to further stand out and captivate our audience.
With so much fresh thinking in the agency’s new logo and colour scheme, the team knew our web presence needed to keep up. Research on website design trends and user experiences led us to imagine a new way of showcasing our strong project imagery. Virtually all of our website text was re-written in order to be more concise and consistently on-message with our updated tone of voice.
The “Touchpoints” phase also produced templates for all Journey’s collateral, such as marketing presentations and proposal templates. New business cards, stationery and signage were designed and produced as well. Literally everything that had the Journey name on it was included in the team’s scope of work.
Our team planned the physical and digital aspects of an ambitious brand re-launch schedule, confidently rolling out the new look via social and web media. The rebranding work concluded with the publication of a comprehensive Journey brand guidelines so all the company’s messaging would be consistent and unified.
We’re excited to share our new brand identity with you – one that allows us to experiment with a wide visual range but still represents our core DNA of working hard to make our clients successful.
We hope that reading about our rebranding process has given you an understanding of the steps we took to get here and has helped you learn about the things to consider before embarking on a similar journey.
If you are thinking about your own rebrand, drop us a line and let’s have a chat. We can bring our wealth of experience to fuel your journey. From concept to launch, we can help you at every stage.
At Journey, we pride ourselves in being brand storytellers as we bring brands to life through design. As such, we thought we’d peel back the curtain and tell you the story of our own brand re-launch.
