We always mention how much we love the LogoLounge wesbite and book series. So, it’s always a great honor for us to have our work included in another volume of the excellent and popular series. Some of our conceptual work for Mesí and final identity for Ignite are included in this volume.

No matter how much Design and our industry changes, at Hexanine, we never feel far from our roots. It’s not hard to remember where we started — as young, hungry students. We like to stoke our creative fires and also remember those foundational days by working with the next generation of talent out there. Teaching is one avenue for that.

From time to time, we like to showcase the work of our students like those below. It’s the impressive output of Tim’s students from Chicago Portfolio School, as part of their strategic identity redesigns in Brand Standards class.

In no particular order:

Jennie Li has redesigned the HBO mark to better reflect the cable channel’s great film and event programming.

Liz Cook has taken Pandora where no Internet radio brand has gone before, by focusing on its musical roots.

Jordan Johnson tackled a Nikon redesign by bringing the brand back to a technical place, with a lightwave and shutter style approach.

Carrie Richardson simplified and updated the Netflix logo by modernizing the typography and carrying across the important element of “pressing play.”

Lindsay Lewis sought to parallel JC Penney’s new brand direction, but instead came up with a clever, cute, and sophisticated hand-drawn type treatment that targets the young, hip, female demographics the company covets.

So, as part of Tim’s Brand Standards and Identity class at Chicago Portfolio School, here are identity redesign projects from two students, Diane Johns and Megan King.

Megan has redesigned the logo for the DVD/Blu-Ray publishers, Criterion. She’s done a great job customizing and streamlining an existing typeface for wordmark use, and subtly works in the traditional “widescreen” proportions as part of her mark.

And Diane has reimagined Barnes & Noble with her own redesign. This clever mark is cobbled together from typographic punctuation, with an approachable, offbeat style for 21st century reading.

Great work all the way around, ladies!

Logos and brand identity are an oft-misunderstood part of design. A logo is not a brand. A logo is not a brand identity. A logo is a crucial part of an overall brand identity, but it’s just one part of a larger toolbox that contains things like color palettes, brand platforms, photo styles, graphic patterns, positioning statements, and much, much more. This is well-traveled territory. But one thing that’s rarely discussed in logo and identity circles is timing. For clients, when is it a good time to rebrand your organization?

It depends on who you ask, but there are a lot of avenues where it makes sense to initiate a logo redesign. Many prospects and clients see identity design only as a first-stage project — to be initiated early in an organization’s life cycle — for startups and newly-minted organizations. But truly, a new identity is valuable for all seasons. If executed thoughtfully and properly, a redesign is a powerful weapon that can have maximum impact across a variety of moments during the life of your brand.

Sidestepping the issue of how to rebrand your company (conversation for another time), we’ve laid out some of the critical moments when an identity redesign can make a major difference:

In The Beginning

It’s crucial to inaugurate your company correctly at launch, and have a cohesive and strategically-designed logo in place from the beginning, so you have a consistent and appropriate story to tell. Some startups believe that well-reasoned brand strategy and design are for “later,” after rounds of funding or IPOs. But the reality is that audiences don’t care about those things — they need a consistent look and message that ties into their experience with your brand. It’s far simpler (and less expensive) to get your brand personality in order at the outset than have to retool or make course corrections soon after launch.

When Things Go South

The economy continues provide a challenging environment for many organizations, so slowing sales might be your chief concern. When faced with a loss of revenue, smart organizations see the opportunity embedded within the situation. Rather than seeing marketing and design budgets as a place to cut costs in tough times, it might be better to hit pause and reconsider — by reworking your brand’s visibility with updated design and positioning.

While your competitors are hunkering down, it’s even easier (and often cheaper) to gain the mindshare of your markets, with a lot less competitive noise. While that’s happening, it’s important to ask some honest questions: Are you still communicating to the right audiences? Have your audience’s perceptions and needs evolved? Has their awareness of your organization changed? A research-based redesign of your logo and identity can help slow the decline and reposition you for a quick rebound.

All In The Family

Sometimes brands and organizations grow in an organic way, and you find yourself introducing products or services in response to market demands and internal changes. An identity redesign can help reorganize product lines, whether it’s for an overarching organization, or for specific product suites and services. In an age where many companies have diverse interests and audiences, sometimes radically different approaches are needed under one roof. Redesigning a brand’s identity and its presence in the world can often help clarify the goals for departments or groups within your company, or on the opposite end, provide much-needed consistency that prunes back wild applications of your previous identity.

The Times They Are A-Changing

The products, services, and initiatives of your organization don’t exist in a vacuum, so it’s crucial to ensure that your messages, overall look, and an identity application can flex over time when necessary. It’s important for your brand to adapt to new competitive forces, shifting markets, or other parts of a changing landscape. With the speed of business and commerce increasing, it’s crucial that an identity is able to bend, flex, and sometimes morph. If you’re saddled with an intractable, immovable brand identity, then it’s even more important to consider a redesign or “refresh,” to gain the ability of adaptation — whether it’s to new market realities or changing trends. What is fresh today might be stale tomorrow, and yesterday’s relevancy is tomorrow’s history. The best designed identities take this into account, and provide room to grow and change.

Back to the Fusion

Companies get absorbed. Buyouts yield new products and challenges. Mergers and acquisitions are ripe with opportunities for logo and brand redesigns, but it’s important to redevelop new properties in a way that’s appropriate and authentic — true to the story your organization is already telling. Sometimes these absorbed entities are so large that their presence shifts the brand gravity of a whole company, and a redesign is vital to rethink and redistribute the visual universe you now live in.

A Shift in Focus

Whether it’s caused by a new CEO or any of the above changes, sometimes organizations just need to change. A shift in organizational thinking can have a domino effect on all the ways a company sees itself, communicates, and relates to the world. This includes a visual identity, and this very public shift can be an important, outward sign of the positive and tectonic changes within.

We’ve just added some work to our portfolio — the redesigned identity of our client and partners, iam8bit. Take a look at the link for more details.

Squaw Valley 1960 Winter Olympics

sneje
Designer: Russ Lobachev, Client: sneje

Snowrider

Reykavik Winter Lights Festival
Firm: Tunglid Advertising Agency ehf., Designer: Tomas Tomasson, Client: Reykavik City

Mt Buller
Firm: SOS Design, Client: Mt Buller

Luxair Snowflake
Firm: Vidale-Gloesener, Client: LuxairGroup

FishFlake
Firm: Bulletpoint Design

Asahiyama Zoo
Designer: Susumu Endo, Client: Asahiyama Zoo

Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Olympics
Firm: Landor Associates

NixOS

Occasionally we use this space to showcase some of our students’ great work.

This time, we are highlighting Brigid Eduarte, former Hexanine intern and student in one of Tim’s Brand Standards Manuals classes at Chicago Portfolio School. Brigid’s project consisted of redesigning the Mead identity and collateral, and creating a clever, whimsical brand book. All of her work captured the creative, imaginative spirit she envisioned for this brand redesign.

Great work, Brigid.