Requests to redesign an identity almost always start from the same points: the logo has aged, the colours no longer work, the typeface looks dated. These observations are often correct. They come too early.
What a visual identity covers
All the visual elements that set a business apart: logo, palette, typography, layout, treatment of images. Taken together and applied consistently, they build recognition. Taken separately, they build nothing.
What the famous examples actually demonstrate
The same brands are always cited to prove the power of a strong identity, and the wrong conclusion is usually drawn. What makes those identities recognisable is not their graphic quality — it is their consistency over decades, and the fact that they express a position the business actually holds.
A coherent identity applied to a vague positioning produces a perfectly coherent vagueness.
Identity is a consequence
A business positioned on sustainability will adopt visual codes that express it. The reverse does not work: adopting those codes does not make a business sustainable, and the gap between what the image promises and what the business does always shows in the end. It then costs more than having no identity at all.
The order that works
- Settle the positioning: what you are, for whom, and who you stop addressing
- Derive the codes from it: what that position allows, and above all what it rules out
- Apply it consistently, across everything, for a long time
Run in that order, the design work moves fast: most of the decisions have already been made. Run the other way, it drags on in exchanges over shades — a sign that aesthetics are being discussed for want of having settled the strategy.