Revealing The New Thanx Brand (April Fools!)
I sent the following as an email to the Thanx team on April 1st.
Team,
April 1st marks the 10-month anniversary of Thanx’s rebranding. Unfortunately in this current tech landscape, companies must constantly rebrand or die. Luckily for everyone, your new Design Overlord has the situation handled (Thanx JSON. You’re welcome).
🔑 They don’t want us to make a new logo. So we made a new logo.
Today Design is proud to reveal the new Thanx brand for 2016. You can share your excitement on Twitter by using #NewThanxBrand and tagging @ImJasonLi + @ThanxInc.
But first…
A Brief History on our Current Logo
The current Thanx logo represents the magic of rewards made effortless. Mark Bult wanted to design a logo that worked seamlessly across all our merchant partners. He envisioned a logo that was instantly recognizable by his 5 year-old son and lasted exactly 10 months. And wow, Mark certainly delivered. Let us all remember how well this logo has served us on our hoodies before we move on.
Starting from the bottom
Reimagining the Thanx brand from the ground up was not easy. We weren’t just creating a new logo, we were creating a new way of life. To start from zero, we needed to step away from the office and collect inspiration from a new environment. And so the Design team went on a retreat into the utilities closet — a sanctuary away from all the sales chatter.
The space was Dark. Intimate. Primal. It felt as if we were stripped away of all facets of life and left with one goal: to make this new logo.
Since its birth Thanx has been putting our merchant partners first. While this strategy worked in our infancy, it’s not sustainable long term. To grow into a $1b unicorn, we must put ourselves first. Therefore we decided that the theme of this rebrand would be “all about us”.
The New Color
Sticking with the theme of being “all about us”, we needed to come up with a color palette that reflects our everyday life.
Two things are constant at Thanx. We’re always on fire and we always have oranges in the dining area. When Design figured that out, everything just magically fell into place. Fire. Cooking. Orange. Burnt Orange. Our new primary color can only be Burnt Orange.
The New Font
We wanted a font that would instantly make an impact to a reader. After consulting with many type experts, we’ve decided on using Impact Regular (all-caps) as our primary font. We feel that Impact is the perfect font for our new self-centered voice.
The FlatSphere™
Consider the sphere. The building block of life and boba balls. The sphere is omnipresent. It’s who we are. It’s what we are. It’s when we are. It’s where we are. It’s how we are.
Like the sphere, Thanx is omnipresent (across most states in America). And so it made complete sense for our new brand to embody the sphere. But we couldn’t just take this shape and call it ours. We needed to really make it ours.
At Thanx we make the impossible possible. We simplify the unsimplifiable. We poke life and make something come out the other end. In true Thanx fashion, what we’ve done with the sphere is absolutely revolutionary. With the help of our friends at the Hydraulic Press Channel we’ve created the FlatSphere™.
With great power comes great responsibility.
And that’s exactly how we feel about the FlatSphere™. We can’t wait to use the FlatSphere™ pattern across our material.
Putting it all together
Every piece of the puzzle had to be perfected before we could put it all together. After many late nights and countless boba’s, the Design team couldn’t be more proud to present you all with this:
One more thing…
This rebranding is not over yet. Word on the street is that we could be changing our name. Soon, gone are the days of awkward phone introductions. Banks? Spanx? Thanks with an X? T-H-A-N-K-X-S? We’ll keep you posted.
The Design team truly is excited for how this new logo will change the lives of our merchants, our consumers, and most importantly ourselves over the next 10 months.
If you have two more minutes to spare, please watch our rebranding video here.
LET’S GO.
Jason Li
April Fools, by the way :)
By the way…Thanx is a pretty legit place to work. We’re always hiring so drop us an application at any time.
