Finding the balance in logo redesigns

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Recently I’ve worked on some interesting logo redesign projects for established businesses. With these projects, the clients have come to Mantra for a new website, not a new logo. Understandably the clients are reluctant to make changes to their visual identity, not least because it holds a lot of familiarity for the company and their customers.

However, if there’s scope to improve their logo from a technical design point of view, I will always try and put the case forward. Finding the right way to approach the topic can be a little bit of a balancing act. But experience has shown me that focusing on the positive elements, and how they can be reframed is usually the most successful approach.

By making it a technical discussion it helps to defuse a lot of the emotion which is attached to familiarity. Chances are their existing logo wasn’t love at first sight, but has grown over time through working with it day in, day out.

A couple of recent examples

Scott Parnell are a very well established builders merchant, with multiple depots across the UK. Updating their visual identity in one go would have been a huge undertaking in both cost and time.

Their monogram logo was very well-known in the industry, so I worked to strengthen this in the logo. By redrawing the logo from scratch I was able to resolve some balance issues with the original letterforms used, along creating uniform alignment and spacing. The result is a stronger, more confident symbol, which was paired with updated typography across their ‘branded house’ brand architecture.

The new logo is familiar enough to work alongside the old logo, and be recognisable, whilst giving a visual identity which is more aligned to the status of the brand.

My second example is for a personal training business based in Sevenoaks, Body Mentors. The company directors had originally sketched their logo symbol on the back of a coaster, so naturally they were very attached to it.

With the rounded shoulders of the ‘B/M’, the symbol always looked slightly out of alignment with surrounding elements. To resolve this, I redrew the logo from scratch and kept a bounding box which keeps the symbol in it’s correct space.

Alongside the symbol I provided new typography options, which helped to address the balance between the size of the ‘BODY MENTORS’ name and symbol. The result is a more confident identity, which was rolled out on their new website and merchandise.