design investigation and work based learning

Design Investigation &Work Based Learning

For the focus of this project, my area of graphic design to investigate was branding and rebranding. I wanted to investigate how brands rebrand, why they rebrand and does rebranding change anything about the company? Do the values of the brand stay the same? Is there any difference in sales or branding recognition? These are the questions I first laid out in order to get started. I first needed to know some background information on the topic itself in order for me to investigate further.

BRANDA NAME, TERM, DESIGN, SYMBOL, OR ANY OTHER FEATURE THAT IDENTIFIES ONE SELLER’S GOOD OR SERVICE AS DISTINCT FROM THOSE OF OTHER SELLERS.

REBRANDINGTHE CREATION OF A NEW NAME, TERM, SYMBOL, DESIGN, OR A COMBINATION OF THEM FOR AN ESTABLISHED BRAND.

1.

ASHVIN GOOLAB | DI & W.B.L EGNM2008 | GDNM YEAR 2

When beginning research, I remembered the brand aviva which previously used to be Norwich union. So I decided to look into the brand more and find out why they wanted to rebrand and was it successful.

I found an article by a graphic designer called David Airey who wrote a short blog post on them and about the cost of rebranding. Norwich union was a brand that was around for over 200 years. In may 2000 they merged with another insurance company CGU to become aviva. Before releasing the rebrand identity for the company in the UK, they were already known as aviva in other countries around the world. The company released a high budget commercial featuring celebrities. Today the company have been successful in rebranding themselves.

While researching I also came across an article from the money section of msn.com. It also had a brief description of the brand and their successes stating industry experts believe renaming was a success. A poll run by Marketing Week in 2009, 67% of marketing professionals voted the exercise had worked. And also, brand recognition increased to 80% while profits rose by 26% to 2.6 billion in 2010.

Brand recognition up80%

26%Rise in

profits

Norwich Union to Aviva2.


This was one of the questions I wanted to find out whilst researching on my topic. This was why is there a need to rebrand or for companies to rebrand? When researching I came across a video which explains why this is and companies that have tried to rebrand, but have failed due to wrong decision making.

This is a video I came across on youtube. Its a news report about the risk of rebranding. Val Defibo president of the advertising agency ‘Deutsch’ in New York talks about why companies feel the need to rebrand themselves. They cover a few brands in the report such as tropicana, pepsi and coke. Companies feel the need to reinvent themselves and constantly wanting to modernise their look. Also as the competition is very aggressive in terms of what your bring to the market and how you bring it. Val Defibo talks about the tropicana brand and their failure to rebrand their package design due to consumer feedback and sales. Consumers couldn’t tell what was tropicana when buying the product. She explains how their signature straw in an orange has been replaced by a glass of orange juice. Also the tropicana typeface is different as well as the entire layout.

The news report also shows the soft drink coke and their attempts to change the formula of the product as well as the design. This also failed to be a success due to the emotional connection people had with the classic coke. She also talks about the new pepsi logo and how people are relating it to the Obama campaign logo. The video was Interesting to look at, as it answered one of my questions and provided useful facts.

Why is there a need to rebrand[?]3.


Here was one of my favourite parts of research I looked upon which was the MIT media lab’s new identity for their newly built building the e14. This is not so much a brand but rather an identity or logo innovation, however I still felt it related to my subject area because they were creating something new.

The logo is based on a visual algorithm in which it shows three shapes positioned differently to create a new unique logo and identity for each person working at the lab. The colours featured on the logo are red,blue,yellow and green. Every person working can claim a new logo which is what’s so amazing about this design. The logo was created by a design practice called the Green Eyl Sengewald Schumacher who are based in Berlin, London and New York.

What I like about this logo, is the fact that it’s reinventing itself all the time. The three shapes are uniquely designed to present a new shape or identity every time it changes position. The colours merging together is also another good element about the design. It’s definitely a great design for the purpose it serves.

MIT Media Lab’s New Identity4.


As I carried on researching I began to look at more brands that have succeeded in rebranding themselves or haven’t.

I came across the clothing brand Gap. The brand attempted to rebrand themselves by creating a new logo at start of the christmas season in 2010. The company decided that they needed to upgrade their image and so went about creating what they thought was a modern, upgraded and fresh logo. They first presented their new logo on their website before opening it to their stores.

This was the cherished logo that gap had for over twenty years.

This was the new logo that replaced the old gap design. The logo featured a white background with a sans serif font of the company name. It then had a small blue gradient box at the edge of the ‘p’.

After releasing their newly designed logo, consumers were not exactly happy with what was supposed to be a new modernised gap. The public took their outrage to social networking sites expressing their feelings and thoughts. Gap responded in a positive way by stating they were proud of their new design as they wanted to reinvent themselves for the next century. Gap also held a contest, where they invited the public to send in their designs and compare it to the new one. Reactions were hectic at the time of this as design professionals were not happy with the negative feedback as they saw it as a lack of respect. Designers get paid money to do quality work. Shortly after, gap went back to the original logo.

The gap logo, after being around for so many years still has a modern look to it today. The text makes it unique with the long stretched look. The colours are also a huge asset to it also. When they rebranded the logo, it looked too formal and lost the clothing brand look. Instead it looked more of a business type design rather than for clothing.

Rebranding Failures5.


When it came to researching key designers in the field of my study, I decided to look at why not associates as they were very diverse and extremely creative in the work they done. Their work in branding and identity is what I looked at in particular which showed a wide range of works produced for clients such as The Reel, Envy, the V&A and many more. As well as branding, they have also produced work in print, book design and motion. An impressive piece of theirs was the comedy carpet in collaboration with Gordon Young. The piece featured over 160,000 granite letters embedded into concrete.

Why Not Associates[?]

I hoped to get in contact with them but unfortunately didn’t receive any feedback from them. However I still think they are brilliant to look at.

“WE’RE KNOWN FOR PUSHING BOUNDARIES”

6.


Development towardsFinal

When approaching development stages towards my final, from all the research I had a lot of case studies that I looked at. I wanted to use the information I had to produce a final which visually showed my findings. So I decided to produce an infographic that shows my research in an interesting visual way. I first started to look at existing designs so I could understand the layout, important things to put in as well as the design elements.

While researching I came across loads of infographics that were visually inspiring. I didn’t want the design of my infographic to be overly done which was what I saw on most. I found a website called www.westiseast.co.uk which is from a guy called Chris West who designed an infographic based on the British love affair with tea.

This is the infographic he designed based on the British love affair with tea. When I saw this I noticed that it had a lot of visuals but were placed in a neat way. I liked the use of icons and shortened facts about the subject. Also, he’s only used three colours which work very well together. The icons and visuals are very simple but work when looking at it graphically. Another good thing was his website, he showed how to create vector shapes and symbols from using a photograph which was helpful.

This a sketch I done of how i would roughly like my infographic to look. As I had a lot of information based on the research, I wanted the facts to come out more as well as the visuals. I wanted the overall look of the infographic to have a structure, so when the viewer sees it, they’ll follow a normal reading pattern instead of looking at it from different angles.

7.


Design Investigation & Work Based LearningEGNM2008Ashvin Goolab1011866GDNM YEAR 2

design investigation and work based learning

Documents

tropicana brand

brand aviva

tropicana typeface i

established brand

brand recognition up80

package design

risk of rebranding

cost of rebranding