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The client was ready for an updated brand after spending over ten years with the same logo and branding. As a media, marketing, and advertising agency, MPI wanted to show the world the brand as it had become - established and reputable. The nature of the industry and the clients MPI catered to also prompted the company to rebrand in order to stay current in its look and feel. While their previous brand had served traditional and conservative-minded clients, MPI was on a mission to seek young, progressive and innovative clients with their refreshed brand. With research provided by internal focus groups and individual research, the new brand would need to be versatile for both print and web. As a woman-owned business, MPI also wanted the new brand to be a nod to the idea of feminine and androgynous value in a male-run industry. The process began by first designing a new logo.
Before beginning the design process, I research competitor logos, industry trends, and a basic SWOT analysis of both the company and the previous brand design. During this process I took notes on ideas I had in regard to design, how to best position the brand within the industry, and what other brands were successfully implementing in their creative. By identifying areas of strength and weakness I was able to make the logo part of the brand's strength in industry positioning.
For MPI's rebranding, we conducted focus groups with the company's employees in two groups. The groups were separated evenly by age and department in order to get a more diverse feel for the employee's perspective without having the data unbalanced in either group. We asked for insight on how the employees viewed the brand's values, culture, and their perspective on the brand's SWOT points. We also included more creative and personality driven questions in order to set a starting point for design, as well as what they hoped the rebrand would bring to MPI.
After gathering research data, I began to play with different ideas on paper, in my head, and eventually in Adobe Illustrator. This initial step involves a lot of internal imagination and in-program experimentation. It is the step when I start combing through typefaces, colors, shapes, and other design elements, and collect all my ideas in Illustrator to be refined into an initial draft for review. Quickly narrowing my idea on what would be best for the brand in my own professional opinion and compared to the research gathered beforehand.
After my initial thoughts were down, I narrowed the drafts down to around eight logos to fine tune. After meeting with the client and presenting these logos for directional critique, the logos were narrowed down to four and the client made decisions on color and general typeface options. From there I refined two logos to be included in the final decision. These two logos were chosen primarily by client feedback, while taking into account initial research data and logo design best practices.
