For Rebrand’s Sake

One of the things that I enjoy about telling people where I work is the ability to say the words “Big Duck.” As in, “you actually work in a place called Big Duck?” In fact, I remember the first time my father-in-law needed to send something to the office, and he heard our agency name for the first time. I believe his exact words were “that’s the name of your company?” And then he chuckled.

For the past year, we’d been having many discussions internally about taking a fresh look at our own brand and perhaps, making a few changes. Not change for change’s sake, mind you, but a deliberate, planned-out, set of things we all felt was appropriate as Big Duck has grown and evolved. The only thing we knew for certain was, we’re sticking with the name “Big Duck” (my father-in-law isn’t the only person who likes it, and hey, it still works).

It’s always a challenge to be objective with one’s own work, so we tackled that by treating ourselves as our own clients. We started with a brandraising assessment, conducted interviews with both internal and external audiences, did our research, and before long, we set out to execute the plan that emerged. The end result of all of our homework was that we all (and that includes you) still love the ducks and how we dress, although some of us insiders felt a touch up might be valuable. So we set about freshening up our visual identity in a way that didn’t lose who we were, but rather, reflected what we’ve become, and what we will be, going forward. We’d be lying to you if we said this process was easy, especially while going about our regular daily work with our nonprofit clients. But I’m proud to say that we’re well on our way.

You may have already noticed some of our changes, or maybe not (they’re pretty subtle). Regardless, we thought it would be nice to share some of the process with you. (I warn you, you won’t get the full breadth of the range of the changes in one blogpost, perhaps we’ll leave that for another day.)

First, would it surprise you to hear that our official Big Duck primary logo is the typographical one (and not the duck mark). The refreshed Big Duck primary logo didn’t actually change too much. Why? Because the weight, colors and “feel” were still true to our organization’s personality. So we took the opportunity to do a little cleanup, and tweak those things that we’ve been meaning to adjust.

See?

Ok, the change is subtle, but important to us on the design team. We’re crazy that way.

We did explore other options, but we decided the original concept was still the best. But here were some initial sketches.

Refreshing, but still, seemed oddly familiar.

Close, but we’re not nearly that sexy.

Too soon?

Well, you can see why we stuck with our original. Plus if we completely dumped who we were, and lost our duckiness, well, we bet that we’d get a lot of angry emails. Not to mention, it’d be a real departure from our positioning.

But lest you think this process was too subtle of a rebrand, check out our revamped duck!

TaDa!

Don’t see it?

The devil is in the details.

Obviously, there’s much more in the Big Duck visual rebrand that will stem from the work tweaking our secondary logo, including some rather kickass print and online materials, as well as a brand-spanking new website coming soon.

Stay tuned!

And by the way, if you’re feeling that your organization is in need of a rebrand, we suggest that you don’t dive right into it. Be sure to do your homework and do it for the right reasons. Let us know if we can help.