Did you know that according to CrowdSpring.com, “On average, companies spend 5-10% of their annual marketing budget on rebranding?” Starting fresh in a new year, you might look at your start up’s signage and want to freshen it up, as part of your New Year planning. Refreshing your brand can breathe new life into a stagnant small business and Signarama is your partner in giving your business a bit of a face-lift with new signage. One of the first things to consider is whether or not your current signage realistically represents your brand.

Rebrand or refresh

Some small businesses start out with a vision of who they are and where they are going, based on their business models. However, as start ups go, some products or services may sell better than others and propel some growing companies towards supporting one segment of their line, more than other products that don’t sell as well. When this happens, businesses may decide to focus on growing that segment of their business and drop other segments. This is considered a rebrand. Not too long ago, Vanity Fair Apparel decided to drop its Wrangler jeans line and concentrate on outdoor sports, fitness lines, and sporty brands, such as Van’s Shoes, The North Face, Timberland and others, to launch their “lifestyles, not labels” rebrand.

Businesses merge

Sometimes businesses merge with other businesses to form new companies. Recently, printing and marketing business ColorArt and creative marketing agency, the DAS Group joined forces to form powerhouse marketing company, Marketing.com. These examples illustrate cases where rebranding is necessary. A brand refresh is, in general, a lot less involved. Some of the reasons brands refresh their looks include:

• Attracting additional segments of shoppers
• Updating a look to remain relevant
• Updating their messages to better represent their brands

Brand Audit

Refreshing your look and message starts with assessing your signage to identify weaknesses and strengths in your brand perception and your audience’s perception of your brand. You can conduct a brand audit yourself, or get help from your local Signarama. Once you determine where your visual communication needs improving, you can better understand what needs to change to better align your signage with your desired brand message. When planning a refresh for your small business, consider these things in your process:

• How can you compete better with other brands
• What visual messaging is currently trending in your industry
• Determine the direction your industry is headed
• How can you update your website to best reflect your refresh
• How can you improve your user journey

A refresh needs to be thorough

Once you determine changes to the visual and/or verbal elements of your brand, you will need to update all your signage, outdoors and indoors. This includes your exterior building signs, wayfinding signs, and directories, as well as your lobby, interior spaces, wayfinding, and accessibility signage. Some businesses that want to keep their logo but refresh their message and signage use vinyl lettering and decals in their window spaces as a refresh, that include updates to their messaging.

Updating your look

If you opened your small business over five years ago, congratulations! The Bureau of Labor Statistics contends that 50% of all small businesses fail within the first five years. After five years of growing your business, you might notice that your logo looks dated or tired and no longer like the symbol of your brand’s purpose and its personality.

Some notable logo evolutions

Updating your look may also include tweaking your logo, as witnessed in the evolution of many iconic brands over the years. Nike, for instance, perfected its name and its swoosh over the years. Such an iconic brand now only needs the swoosh to identify it. Google changes its logo every so often, switching to a sans serif font in 2015 to better accommodate their team of designers in manipulating and playing with the Google logo for marketing initiatives, including Google Doodles. However, if logo design isn’t your favorite thing to do, Signarama’s team of designers can help you with a logo update you will love to use anywhere.

Updating your message

When refreshing your brand’s image, your company’s tone and voice are important elements to get right. Taglines and slogans need to align with your brand’s image and message. Home Depot’s trademarked slogan, “How doers get more done,” models the home improvement store’s upbeat, DIY stance. Home Depot’s corporate color palette also evokes an energetic working stance, with its vibrant orange and white logo, printed on a diagonal that looks like it’s about to burst out of its frame. Your refresh might involve changes to your corporate color palette, as well.

Color choice

Changing your corporate color palette can prove dramatic, and companies need to verify that a corporate color change will better serve their brand’s identity and message. For some brands, color changes to their logo and signage are necessary. According to an Accenture study, more than half of consumers would pay more for sustainable products designed to be reused or recycled. Brands that are looking to accentuate their sustainability stance in a refresh may gravitate towards more natural and organic colors, such as greens, browns, and jewel tones to support their sustainable message. Brands with vibrant contrasting colors are thought of as energetic brands, while those with metallic tones, more white space and minimal messages evoke the elegance and sophistication of more upscale brands. For some companies, a brand refresh may include a deeper saturation or richer shade of their current color palette. Along with a deeper saturation of colors for a brand refresh, some businesses change their typefaces in a refresh.

Fonts and typefaces

For your new year brand refresh, you might want to change the fonts and typefaces of your logo and signage, especially if your fonts no longer represent your brand, or your original font suite included trendy fonts, such as Papyrus or Festiva. A current trend for technology brands focuses on sans serif fonts, for their contemporary, minimalist affect. Whatever fonts you choose for your refresh, make sure they are easy to read close up and at long distances and that your refresh promotes your instantly identifiable status.  

It’s a brand new year and if your New Year planning includes a brand refresh for your growing business, our design and production team at Signarama can help you make a new statement and expand your brand’s reach in 2024!