Rebranding, Hidden Truths, and Lessons Learned Along the Way

A company brand is something that evolves with time, as the company grows. So it should come as no surprise that we’ve been thinking about rebranding for a couple years.

This isn’t the first iteration our logo has gone through, but this time the process was different. This time it wasn’t just a logo; it was our identity, our sense of who we were as a team, and therefore much more involved.

The Rebranding Process

Involved doesn’t necessarily mean it took longer — at least the actual implementation didn’t take longer. James Costa (our Creative Director), Jonathan (our Brand Designer), and I sat down to talk about it after we launched a newly rebranded website to celebrate the evolution we’d gone through.

“We started thinking about it about a year ago when I joined the team,” Jonathan said. “We had it in our minds for a long time before actually doing the work.”

Once we had a concept firmly in mind, though, the actual work only took a month, spread between client projects and other day-to-day tasks. Speaking in terms of time/cost analysis, it wasn’t expensive — nor should it have been. Having a thoroughly envisioned, solid concept really cuts down on the time it takes to design a brand — or anything, for that matter. Once you know how the end result should feel, the rest is process.

“And we followed our branding process to a tee,” said James. We all smiled. The same process we use with our clients every day worked on our own stuff. That felt good.

Let’s talk about the process.

Positioning Ourselves Against Confusion

The first itch we tried to scratch with the rebrand was to position ourselves against perceptions we didn’t want associated with our brand.

For years we’ve been “The Phuse.” Over the time we’ve used that name, we’ve seen many misspellings (ThePhuse, Fuse, and variations between), mispronunciations, and questioning expressions. “You work for who?” people would ask when we introduced ourselves at networking events. We decided that dropping “The” from in front of the name would simplify it and help eliminate confusion. “Phuse.” Short and sweet. We found a new domain name, Phuse.ca, to match.

Another issue we faced was that the old cloud logo appeared to be eerily similar to the iCloud logo currently in use by Apple (but we came up with it first… no, seriously!). Worse, a cloud with a thunderbolt is the universal sign for gloomy weather. While rainy days can be fun, our idea of who we were as a team didn’t line up with the negative connotations gloomy weather implied. Early iterations of the new brand included clouds, but we moved away from that concept quickly.

The third issue that confounded us was of our own making: a lack of consistency in fonts, colors, and presentation. Over the years, we’ve experimented with different colors and different applications of the brand. The style of our portfolio also shifted as new designers came on board and our sensibilities changed.

The truth is, we didn’t come up with a style guide when we came up with the original concept over five years ago. The lack of a definitive guide allowed the brand to become muddled over time. To remedy this once and for all, we created an in-depth brand guide that defines the colors, fonts, tone of voice, and usage.

Positioning Ourselves With Our Core Values

Once we had defined what we didn’t want to be, we were faced with the more challenging task of defining what we did want to be. What were our company values? What did we want to be known for?

We already had a few ideas bouncing around. The 5 Pillars of Awesome Team Culture talk James and I gave at South by Southwest Interactive 2014 was part of the story. We also talked a few months before the rebrand process started about how we wanted to position ourselves to our clients: namely, we wanted them to think of us as a product team, which is how we think of ourselves.

We’ve learned a lot in the past few years and, as usual, when we learn, we iterate. Out of that “rework” (to steal the catchphrase from Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson), we distilled our core values down to three, each related to one of the foundations of our business:

• Our team, which is Authentic, both in how we communicate with clients and represent our work.
• Our environment, which is Collaborative, as we work closely with teammates, clients, and partners.
• Our process, which is Transparent both in terms of the company’s roadmap and project-related communications.

We see the authenticity, collaboration, and transparency every day now. Defining these values didn’t change the way we work. They defined what we were already doing. They also drive every decision we make on a day-to-day basis.

Knowing the words to use just made it easier to see.

The Story of Our Brand

With our positioning clarified, we kicked off the design process and raced through it in a month. A lot of great discussion happened around the concept of the logo during this work, and that’s the story we tell to people who ask what the logo is all about.

In the words of James:

“The logo is made up of dots and dashes that come together to form the bolt. As a remote team, coming together from different places (both in terms of location, background, and experience) is a part of who we are. It also shows that we’re a part of something bigger than ourselves: a Phuser is never on their own. They always have the full support of the whole team. Our clients rely on us in a similar way. We become a part of their product team. Finally, the lightning bolt represents energy, which is something that we bring to all of our projects — in terms of speed, quality, and the customer experience.”

There’s even an easter egg hidden in the logo. The acronym ACT, which stands for the three core values of authenticity, collaboration, and transparency, were built into the logo itself.

Phuse’s Brand Book

With the design process complete, it was time to put it all together in context, and define how the brand was to be used in all its various permutations.

This work was a collaborative effort between Jonathan and I. I wrote content alongside him as he was formatting the file in InDesign. It was a rewarding experience, because we were able to take all the collateral we already had and make a guide that would encompass the entire brand for years to come. Achievement unlocked!

You can download our Brand Book here.

A Phased Rollout

When our design team had a definitive brand guide to pull from, we reskinned our current website so that it fit the brand, and cranked out a new client guide and sample guide to share with our prospective clients for a consistent experience.

Over the next few months, we’ll be reworking individual pages of the site to improve them, and we’ll be designing other brand collateral — new business cards, t-shirts, hoodies, stickers to hand out at events, you name it. We’re excited to see it all take shape and will be sure to share it with you when it’s done.

We chose to roll out our new brand one piece at a time because iterating is part of who we are. We’re OK with doing it one piece at a time because it lines up with the core values we covered above. Not to mention, iterative workflows and minimum viable products are what we recommend to our clients — and we practice what we preach.

Lessons Learned

Branding is an ongoing practice. Each new decision you make continually redefines your brand over time. Rebranding doesn’t mean that you need to be something different than what you were. But it can mean that you’re more confident in the direction you want to go in.

Defining who we are helped us make decisions throughout the process, and influenced the imagery we chose to represent Phuse for 2015, and years to come.

Do you have any lessons to share from your own rebranding experience? Share your story with us in the comments!