Thursday April 5, 2007

Redesigning Geniant

by Jared Christensen in Design

0 comments

Creating an identity system is probably one of the most difficult design challenges there is.

When Geniant acquired Bright Corner in January of 2006, it inherited a team of designers who almost immediately began the creative process of rebranding the company. Even before the acquisition was finalized, there was much talk of how the visual identity had to change to create a good match between the integrated companies’ service offerings.

The process of just creating a new logo turned out to be much harder work than we anticipated. Despite the fact that internal work had to take a backseat to paying client work, the creative process was complicated with ponderous dialogue, like “Who are we? Do we even know? How can we create an identity if we don’t know who we are yet?” Though we knew there was tremendous potential in the combination of our UX-centered design services with the technical and business acumen of the “legacy” Geniant team, we were all quite new to each others’ views, goals, skillsets, personality and culture. In short, no one knew for sure exactly what kind of business the “new” Geniant was, or would turn out to be.

There was no argument concerning the old logo; we were all in agreement that it had to go. Though it had effectively communicated Geniant’s marketing concept over the years, it looked dated and certainly didn’t represent the skills and abilities of the newly-acquired User Experience & Design talent. We wanted to sell design, and everything about that old logo made us look like we couldn’t design.

For a few months, we worked on logo concepts. The plan, internally, was to create an “interim” logo to satisfy the immediate need for a more polished look and regroup sometime in 2007 to develop a permanent identity. That being the plan, we simply worked on variations of the 3-layer marketing message represented in the old logo. But when concerns were raised about the long-term impact of going through the rebranding process twice — and all the costs that go along with that — the directive came down: create the final identity immediately.

With this major shift in focus, our User Experience Director Stephen P. Anderson pulled the brakes on all identity work and pressed for full-on branding exercises. “If it’s good enough for our clients, it’s good enough for us” was our call to action. Over the next several weeks, the Design team met with Geniant stakeholders to discover the company identity, armed with the familiar arsenal of moodboards, word association, color and brand positioning statement exercises. We started from scratch. We toiled and labored, whittling down the swath of typefaces, logo ideas and color schemes to the choices that were most representative of all the knowledge we could gather about ourselves.

In the end, we had three strong contenders. All three options had been explored and determined to be viable, but ultimately Option 3 was selected to move forward — with the requisite changes that usually follow. It was decided that the placement, size and colors of the logomark weren’t quite right and that the typeface was too quirky. We had already selected Etelka as the typeface for the “interim” identity, and upon going back to that typeface we discovered that it looked quite elegant next to the logomark.

The colors were a bit too “earthy” for the brand and so additional color schemes based on our previous color research were gathered and presented. In the end, we came to a concensus that the core color scheme of blues and dark grays worked best.

The placement of the logomark in relation to the text was a tough nut to crack until (as happens so often) someone — in this case, Stephen — stopped at my desk with fresh eyes and suggested flipping the mark horizontally, rotating it counterclockwise and positioning it to the right of the typeface. It just worked, and all the stakeholders agreed.

The concept of the unrevised logomark was to represent progression and movement, and the revised logo manages to pull that concept off as well, along with a splash of GTD (the bottom two shapes look like check marks). More than anything, the new logo simply looks more modern, capable and competent.

Geniant’s full identity is still not realized, but the most difficult task is checked off the list. With the logo out of the way, the upcoming challenges have a certain frame of reference that helps drive and anchor design decisions.

Comments on “Redesigning Geniant”