Brand Evolution, Revolution, or Creation?

Learn how to approach each of these brand design challenges

Juan Carlos Otoya de Narváez is the founder and managing director of SmartBrands (@smartbrands), a leading independent consultancy agency for branding in Bogotá, Colombia. The agency started as a project to aid entrepreneurs in defining and designing their business ideas.

Thanks to its growing experience and reputation, the company was able to get involved with big brands, such as Wingo, Carulla, Ding, Cemento Alion, Oleoducto de Colombia, Viajala, and Financiera Progressa, among many others.

Its main aim is to integrate its intuition and unique strategic vision to create intelligent and inspiring brands that successfully connect with their target market. Its vision helps solve the typical design challenges encountered by all businesses at any point in their life span.

Read on as Juan Carlo explains what these basic challenges are and how to approach them, based on his own professional experience.

Brand Evolution

This process is applied when a change in the visual identity is needed: to give it a new appearance while maintaining a connection with the current identity. You can move away from the original to varying degrees, but the graphic essence is preserved.

Case study

When Grupo Parking decided to unite its entire portfolio under the same brand umbrella, the challenge was to find a graphic medium that would best communicate this integration. The company opted to keep its most established and recognized brand in the market—Parking—and adopt the elite line's color. Although they considered creating a whole new brand, ultimately, it was decided to preserve the successful positioning of the company and renew and communicate its corporate evolution.

How to approach the evolution challenge

Brand mathematics: This idea, devised by Juan Carlos, consists of identifying the essential and recognizable elements and multiplying them, subtracting the expendable elements, and adding suggestions.

Brand revolution

This process applies to brands that need a bolder transformation that aligns with the business goals of that specific moment in time.

Case study

Oleoducto de Colombia needed a strategy to better connect with the communities living alongside their pipelines. They opted for a change in their identity to communicate their social and environmental endeavors, and transmit a sense of innovation. The solution was a graphic revolution that added elements of sustainability to the brand.

How to approach the revolution challenge

Prepare for battle: You may face resistance from the client, so your attitude must be daring enough to be able to convince them that getting rid of the current identity is their best option. You must rely on solid arguments that back up your revolutionary graphic proposals.

Brand creation

As the name indicates, the goal of this challenge is to build a whole new brand from scratch to cover a new core business.

Case study

Tiendas Lamy is a brand that changed its product catalog. From selling pens alone, it moved on to sell a wide range of stationery for the office, the home, and personal use. Its product diversification was so radical that they needed to reinvent their business and attract a different market. It was crucial to analyze whether the brand had scope for the evolution or revolution of its identity. This was not the case, and the solution was to create a new brand.

How to approach the creation challenge

Open your mind: In this case, you’ll be facing a blank canvas, so you will have to open up to all sorts of creative possibilities, familiarize yourself with trends, and look for existing models in the market.

How to define the limits between each challenge?

To establish which of the three graphic challenges is appropriate, you must always analyze the relationship spectrum that the original brand has with the new objectives.

Knowing what challenges you will be dealing with is essential, not only to help you draw up creative objectives but also to establish timescales, processes, and fair remuneration for your work.

If you want to learn more about the link between design and brand strategy, sign up to the course Basics Principles of Brand Design, in which you’ll discover the keys to developing smart and inspiring branding.

You may be interested in:

- How to Present a Logo to a Client.
- 5 Golden Rules for Designing a Successful Logo.
- What Is a Brand?