Your company's brand defines who it is while resonating with your ideal clients. It's the brand that builds trust in your business.
The brand should be recognizable, memorable, and ideally timeless. But at some point you may feel it's time for a brand update when your brand no longer aligns with how it is perceived by customers -- or doesn't evoke the right emotions anymore in its target market.
If you find yourself in this position, don't worry. You could update your brand below in less than an hour without spending hundreds of dollars on outside companies to design a new brand for you.
Here are five easy steps to updating your company's branding:
1. Review your brand messaging
Your brand messaging is what defines who you are as a company. Most importantly, ensure the message resonates with the ideal clients you're trying to help.
Take a look at your brand messaging and ask yourself if it stays true to what your company is all about today. Does the messaging make sense for how customers perceive your brand? If yes, great! If not, this may be a good opportunity to update your brand messaging too.
2. Identify key elements of brand design
When updating brand design, think of three different aspects: colors, fonts and images/graphics.
Colors: Your brand colors should go with the brand message you've defined above. Think of which colors best represent your business and which you want people to associate with what you do (for example: green typically represents natural products).
Fonts: There are thousands of fonts out there, so how do you know which brand font you like the best? As a rule of thumb, consider what brand fonts are currently popular. Your brand fonts should be clear to read and easy to understand. Look at your brand fonts next time you're using Facebook or Twitter -- or even when reading an email (don't worry, we won't judge).
Images and Graphics: Your brand images help people connect to your brand. What kind of images would best represent your company? How about illustrations, photos, graphics or icons? We've created a Small Business Resource Guide to help.
3. Create a brand guide
A brand guide can be used across all your needs: print collateral, web pages, social media profiles and even ads or commercials. If done right, it can be something that's helpful to your brand, but also enables team members across the organization to understand the main elements that make up your brand.
Here's what should be included in the brand guide:
- The brand name and its meaning.
- Logo usage guidelines: size, colors, editing the logo etc. Since you'll be using your logo a lot it's important to specify how many times each color can be used and how it should be applied (even if that means just saying "never change or alter the logo"). You never know who might use the logo somewhere else, so it's good to start early on with a proper guideline.
- Colors: We recommend naming each color and cross-referencing the colors in CMYK, PMS and HEX numbers.
- Fonts: this is one of the trickiest parts, because fonts are available in different styles, weights and colors. Specify the typeface you want to use (e.g.: Helvetica Neue) and if there's a certain weight you'd like to see it come out as (e.g.: bold).
- Photos: where can photos of people be used? Should they have a particular expression on their face or remain more neutral? How about landscape photos – do you prefer them vertical or horizontal?
- Illustrations: in case you use illustrations, where can they be used? How big should they be and in what colors?
- Logotypes and lockups: if you have several logotypes (e.g.: for print vs digital) or product lockups with the logo, specify which one is the primary one and how it should be applied (color, size etc.) Then provide the others separately; you don't need to create them all at once.
- Supporting communication materials: this is especially important when it comes to communication materials like business cards, letterheads and email signatures.
This way everyone knows where they can find this information and how it should be used. If you ever need to explain to someone else how something should be applied (or what the colors/fonts actually mean) everything will be clear without having to send them around looking for different posts or pages across various domains (websites, social media etc..). The goal is that no matter who works on a project for your company, things always stay consistent.
4. Update website for consistency
It's important to see how website elements like design and content go together seamlessly.
You'll want to check if your current background image goes well with updated brand colors, font styles, and images.
Your brand colors and brand fonts should also be consistent in your website design. If you're using brand color #3 on your website, don't use brand color #5 from the brand image collection below unless it has been updated to match new brand colors. Take a look at brand fonts used on the site too and make sure they work with new brand fonts.
5. Update messaging across all platforms
After updating brand design, remember to update all messaging across all platforms. It is important to have a clear message of who you are as a company anytime someone wants to know more about what you do or sees your profile online. Make sure you use a variety of media including social media, email, direct mail and print materials to highlight brand messaging. Reflect brand colors, brand font styles and brand images across all platforms too.
Updating a brand may seem overwhelming, but at Rockstarr & Moon, we make it simple. If you are interested in a brand refresh, let’s chat.
Run the audit on paper first
Before you update anything, count how bad it is. Open a blank page and list every place a prospect meets your brand.
Say you list twelve: homepage, about page, LinkedIn company page, your own LinkedIn profile, Facebook, Google Business Profile, email signature, proposal template, invoice, sales deck, business card, and the sign on the door.
Now check each against four things. Current logo. Current colors. Current fonts. Current one-line description of what you do.
In this hypothetical, you find the old logo on the invoice and the business card. The proposal template uses a font nobody chose. And the one-line description reads four different ways across five places. That is seven fixes out of twelve touchpoints, and five of them are words.
That last part is the usual surprise. Owners expect a design problem and find a messaging problem. So fix in this order: the description everywhere first, then whatever a prospect sees right before they pay you (proposal, deck, invoice), then the rest.
Put a date on the audit and repeat it once a year. Brands rarely break in one big moment. They drift one "quick" social graphic at a time. For the strategy side, start with these tips for building a solid branding strategy.
Refresh or rebrand? Decide before you touch a color
Someone on your team says the logo feels dated. Two weeks later you are debating a new company name. Stop there.
A refresh and a rebrand are different jobs, and most companies need the smaller one.
You need a refresh when the business is the same and the presentation drifted. Same clients, same services, same promise. The website says one thing, the sales deck says another, and three versions of the logo are floating around. The five steps in this post are a refresh.
You need a rebrand when the business itself changed. You serve a different buyer now. You dropped the service you were known for. You merged. The name tells people the wrong thing about what you do. That is a bigger project and it starts with strategy long before design.
A quick test. Ask three clients and three people on your team to describe what you do in one sentence. If the six answers roughly match each other and match what you would say, your brand is intact and your materials need cleanup. If they do not match, colors will not fix it. Start with step one and stay there until the message is right.
Frequently asked questions
What is a brand refresh? A brand refresh is an update to how your company looks and sounds without changing who you are or what you sell. It usually covers messaging, colors, fonts, imagery, and the consistency of all four across your website and materials. The name, the core offer, and the audience stay the same.
How do I update my company's brand without starting over? Start by rewriting your one-line description of what you do and who it is for, then bring your visuals in line with it. Review your messaging, settle your colors, fonts, and image style, document them in a short brand guide, and apply the guide to your website first and every other channel after.
How do I create a simple brand guide for a small business? Put your logo rules, color codes, fonts, image style, and core message on two or three pages that anyone on your team can follow. Include the exact HEX values, which logo version goes on dark and light backgrounds, and the sentence that describes what you do. Short guides get used.
What is the most common mistake companies make when updating their brand? The most common mistake is changing the visuals while leaving the old message in place. A new logo on top of a vague description of what you do still confuses buyers. Fix the words first. Then check every touchpoint, because one outdated proposal template undoes the work you did on the homepage.
How often should a company update its brand? Audit your brand once a year and refresh it whenever the materials no longer match the business. Most small companies need a light cleanup every two to three years as services and clients shift. A full rebrand is rarer and should follow a real change in what you sell or who buys it.