When is it time for a rebrand?

If you are a creative entrepreneur, staying on trend is important – so you’re going to want to keep your logo and web design fresh and up to date.

That being said, it is impractical (and also illogical) to rebrand every year.

• One, your customers might already be familiar with your visual brand identity, and might even have emotional connections to it by now.  Remember when Tropicana juice changed their packaging and everyone complained? Or when Olive Garden changed their logo and there was a huge uproar?
• Two, remember that your brand is more than just your logo. It is a promise you make to your customers. Changing your logo just to keep up with the trends might impact your brand negatively if you don’t give it enough thought and study how it works for your audience.
• Three, the cost of a redesign is not cheap.

I think this is a constant struggle among creatives – the pull between a classic, timeless design, and one that’s trendy and current. If you choose the former: on one hand you’ll have a logo that will never go out of style, but on the other hand it might be considered boring and unimaginative. A trendy design, on the other hand, shows that you are keeping up with what’s current, but you will have to change it before it goes out of style; that means investing in a redesign every couple of years.

My advice? Do what you think is best for your brand. Do you want to be perceived as avant garde and fearlessly creative? Or classic and elegant? (I’m not saying avant garde isn’t elegant, mind you.)

How do you know when it’s time to rebrand?

A few examples:

1. Your logo doesn’t reflect your brand values anymore. Maybe you have a delicate, feminine logo but your style is now more edgy and dramatic.
2. Your logo wasn’t effective in the first place. For example, you hired an amateur designer at that time who just used stock cliparts and a mishmash of fonts. You are now ready to invest in a professional-looking logo.
3. You work in a creative field and want to be ahead of the trends and want a fresh look to establish yourself as an innovator, so you will want to make sure that you’re ahead of everyone else in terms of your brand aesthetic.

How about you? What were your reasons for rebranding your business, or redesigning your logo? Let me know in the comments!