{"id":26226,"date":"2021-08-10T09:48:02","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T08:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/?p=26226"},"modified":"2021-08-18T13:20:14","modified_gmt":"2021-08-18T12:20:14","slug":"how-and-why-we-refreshed-our-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intercom.com\/blog\/how-and-why-we-refreshed-our-brand\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealing our refreshed brand: How (and why) we’ve updated our look"},"content":{"rendered":"

Your brand is how your company presents itself to the world, but inevitably there will need to be slight adjustments along the way.<\/p>\n

A brand is not a singular design element, font, color, illustration style, or icon. (Your brand \u2260 your logo<\/a>, for example.) Rather, it\u2019s a system of interconnected elements that represent how your company looks, feels, and acts, and which combine to create a consistent, recognizable, unified personality.<\/p>\n

So as your business grows, it\u2019s natural that your brand will need to grow with it.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve talked before about what goes into building a brand<\/a>, but how do you go about evolving<\/em> a brand as you scale? What do you need to consider as you start to add new team members and extend your reach to new audiences? And how do you keep your brand\u2019s personality and appeal to upmarket enterprise customers without turning into a corporate clone?<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve learned from our recent brand refresh project, and some of the tweaks we\u2019ve made to help take us to the next level.<\/p>\n

Stress testing the theoretical<\/h2>\n

Back in 2018, we launched a holistic rebrand with the help of an external agency. At the time, Intercom was very much an eclectic brand, so this work was foundational in helping to solidify our brand system with thoughtful creative decisions and specific guidelines that would help us to maintain a consistent and ownable brand.<\/p>\n

But, as with any external rebrand, this new brand system was all very theoretical until the handoff to our internal team. Only then could we start to truly test it in real-world scenarios.<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last few years we\u2019ve really seen where the brand was strong, as well as where it needed tweaking\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Over the last few years we\u2019ve been doing just that, and we\u2019ve really seen where the brand was strong, as well as where it needed tweaking. Some things worked really well, but other rules just weren\u2019t applying and needed constant adaptation, leading to confusion (and extra work) for our designers.<\/p>\n

We also found that certain design elements just weren\u2019t scalable. For example, that brand system relied heavily on a specific style of illustration and animation \u2013 but no one on our team illustrated or animated like that. This was a big restriction, particularly as we wanted to move our design fully in-house. Not to mention that building your brand around one single, specific, difficult-to-replicate element means that your whole brand is in danger if the designer responsible leaves or wants to try something different.<\/p>\n

In this time, we\u2019ve also grown, both in terms of our goals and our team size. We\u2019ve evolved as a company, and we wanted our brand to mature with us and be clearer for new designers joining us.<\/p>\n

Refreshing the brand<\/h2>\n

So with all this in mind, we kicked off a brand audit to see what was working and what needed work. We focused on five main pillars of our brand system: illustration, color, typography, product, and voice and tone.<\/p>\n

Illustration<\/h3>\n

Then:<\/strong> The style and animation proved difficult to replicate on a go-to-market timeline. The existing illustration style was beautiful, but it was difficult to replicate without an in-house full-time illustrator. Likewise, the detailed animation was extremely laborious and time-consuming. Our usage guidelines lacked direction, which created a loose and unrefined feeling across placements.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong> The use of thinner lines, more strategic usage guidelines, and the elimination of full body illustrated characters make our system more scalable, and allow it to play a supporting role in boosting photography or product images, instead of stealing the show.<\/p>\n

Color<\/h3>\n

Then:<\/strong> The stark palette made it difficult to pair colors, which meant we consistently repeated the same pairings. Our core colors of mint and black were constraining and didn\u2019t work very well outside of digital applications. When bringing in our secondary color palette, it often veered into appearing too playful or even childish, which limited us in being strategic with tone.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong> We\u2019re keeping our core color palette, but we\u2019ve made some updates to the details and usage guidelines. We\u2019ve carefully iterated on it to create a more unified, cohesive whole, ensuring that the colors easily work together while still packing a punch.<\/p>\n

Typography<\/h3>\n

Then:<\/strong> Our font was a good palate cleanser, but it was limited in tone. In text-heavy applications, it lacked personality or hierarchy. As our sole typeface, it was perfectly agreeable. So agreeable, in fact, that it can feel like every tech company is using some variation of it \u2013 making it hard to stand out.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong> We made the bold decision to create a totally custom headline font to complement our existing sans serif font. We have an incredibly talented typography designer on our team in Kyle Benson<\/a>, our brand refresh project lead, so this was a great opportunity to leverage some of the unique talent at our disposal in an easily scalable, replicable way. The resulting headline font, which we\u2019ve called Honey, adds some personality \u2013 we like to think of it as warm but opinionated. Honey is complemented by two additional custom fonts called Smile and Intercom Brand, which add a dash of additional personality when needed.<\/p>\n

Product<\/h3>\n

Then:<\/strong> Reducing product visuals to focus on one feature at a time was creating more problems than it solved. Simplifying and abstracting the product in our marketing resulted in a lack of comprehension and general confusion about what our product did and how it worked.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong> With our product visuals, we\u2019re now abstracting far less and really letting the beautiful product do the heavy lifting. We\u2019re maintaining product integrity, layout, colors, and structure, but using animation to tell the dynamic story of how it works. In other words, we\u2019re showing, not telling.<\/p>\n

Voice and tone<\/h3>\n

Then:<\/strong> Our voice has always been playful, but we needed a way to scale this as we grow. This meant that we needed clear guidelines on how to approach new and different audiences \u2013 without ever losing our personality or becoming \u201ccorporate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now:<\/strong> We\u2019ve outlined some core characteristics defining what our voice is (conversational, clear, confident, delightful) and is not (goofy, oversimplified, flashy, flowery). We want our voice to complement our visual design. Together, they tell a consistent story that represents who we are as a company and what we value. Even when we\u2019re talking to businesses, we always want to speak to real people \u2013 conversationally<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The magic is the people<\/h2>\n

Refreshing a brand isn\u2019t just a simple scientific equation. It\u2019s not as mathematical as existing brand system + real life usage + time + company growth = updated brand<\/strong>. There\u2019s also a little magic involved.<\/p>\n

The magic comes from getting a world-class group of creatives together to do what they do best: create. The Intercom Brand Studio is made up of designers, writers, typographers, photographers, illustrators, animators, and producers (oh, and we’re hiring<\/a>). It’s the perfect storm of talent and opportunity \u2013 the kind of environment where ideas can flourish, and where the team’s individual talents can be leveraged in all kinds of cool and creative ways. Without the dedication, hard work, and raw talent of these creative folks, the Intercom brand refresh would never have been possible.<\/p>\n

Thank you, Intercom Brand Studio, for helping to make this year-long passion project a reality.<\/p>\n

Special thank you to:<\/p>\n