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Deep dives into design thinking, creative process, and the intersection of business and aesthetics.
A good rebrand leaves customers more certain of you than they were before.
A lot of leadership teams treat a rebrand as a creative exercise, a chance to shake things up or, if they're honest, to get rid of a logo they've grown tired of looking at. We see it the other way round. Rebranding isn't a creative project with commercial side effects; it's risk management.
When you change how the market recognises you, you put at risk the recognition you've built up and the trust of the customers you already have. That risk is worth taking to fix a problem that's costing you money, and hard to justify for anything less.
There's one good reason to rebrand
If your current brand is ugly but effective, bringing in the right enquiries at the right price, leave it alone. Whether anyone likes the logo matters far less than whether it's working.
We only recommend a rebrand when the current identity has become a liability and is getting in the way of the business. The aim is for people to understand what you do faster and to believe you can do it. Done well, that also gives you more room on price. If the real reason is that you're bored of it, buy a new office chair and leave the company's assets alone.
Signs your brand is costing you money
These are the signals we look for. Any one of them on its own might not mean much. If several sound familiar, the brand is probably holding the business back.
You work at the premium end, but the enquiries keep asking for cheap execution. The brand is saying "budget" even when your proposals say otherwise.
Clients flinch at the price, because the packaging doesn't look like it holds anything valuable.
People keep asking "So, do you do X?" or "Are you like such-and-such?"
Your sales team hesitates before sending the website link, because it doesn't match the pitch they've just given.
LinkedIn says one thing, the homepage says another and the pitch deck says a third.
You look like your competitors. Swap the logos and nobody would notice.
It takes too long to explain what you do, and the first call gets used up explaining it.
Before anyone briefs a designer, write down which of these you're trying to fix and what you'd expect to change if it worked: fewer enquiries asking for the cheap version, say, or shorter first calls and less discounting. If nobody can fill that in, you don't have a case for a rebrand yet.
A refresh or a repositioning is often enough
There are degrees of change, and you rarely need the most drastic one. A refresh keeps the name and the logo and tidies up everything around them, from the typography to the inconsistencies that have crept into the colour palette over the years. It's the lowest-risk option, and it can make a company look current without costing it any recognition.
A repositioning keeps the visual identity and changes the story. A firm that has been selling "IT support" starts selling "cybersecurity strategy". The logo stays where it is and the headline changes.
A full rebrand, with a new name and a new identity, is the last resort. It's only warranted when the current brand is doing real damage, reputational or legal, or can't stretch to where the company is going.
Decide what to protect before you change anything
The most expensive mistake in a rebrand is throwing out what was working along with what wasn't. When Tropicana redesigned its orange juice packaging in 2009, the new carton lost the orange with a straw in it, the picture shoppers knew the brand by. Sales reportedly fell by about 20% within two months, and the old packaging was brought back. If your customers know you by a particular colour, shape or phrase, changing it asks them to find you all over again, and not all of them will.
So before we change anything, we audit what needs protecting. A simple place to start is to ask a handful of customers how they'd describe you to someone who hadn't heard of you, and listen for the colour, the symbol or the phrase that keeps coming up. Whatever your market uses to identify you stays, or changes only for a very good reason.
Search is next. A change of name or domain can throw away your search history if it's handled carelessly. Before anything goes live, list every address on the old site, point each one at its new equivalent with a 301 redirect, and update the structured data so it describes the new name.
Existing clients need reassurance too. A client who sees a new look may wonder whether you've been bought out or the management has changed. Tell them what's different and what isn't before they have to ask.
Getting past "I don't like blue"
Rebrands often stall at the point where someone senior decides they don't like blue. Personal taste is the quickest way to derail one, and everyone in the room has some.
The way through is to agree what the new identity has to do before anyone sees a design, and then judge every option against that. So the question put to a design is whether it sets the company apart from the competitors it's most often compared with, and whether it speaks to the buyers everyone agreed matter most. Practical tests belong in there as well, like whether it still reads on a phone.
Agreeing those measures at the start takes most of the ego out of the approvals. The designer is working to a strategy the whole team signed off, and the discussion is about whether the work meets it.
Change the website first and announce it last
A rebrand is a jolt for the people who already know you, so the launch needs sequencing. Switching everything over in a day and posting about it the same afternoon is a good way to confuse your most loyal customers.
The website goes first, because it's where people go to check what's true. Then the everyday material: invoices, email signatures, proposal templates, the sign on the door. It's dull work and it matters, because a new website next to an old invoice makes the whole change look half-done. Have templates that already carry the new identity ready for staff on the first day, or the old one will keep turning up in proposals for months.
Only once all of that is in place is it worth announcing on LinkedIn. By then the announcement confirms something your customers have already started to see for themselves.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Brand strategy and identity services · View identity and website projects · Discuss a rebrand
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.
A good rebrand leaves customers more certain of you than they were before.
A lot of leadership teams treat a rebrand as a creative exercise, a chance to shake things up or, if they're honest, to get rid of a logo they've grown tired of looking at. We see it the other way round. Rebranding isn't a creative project with commercial side effects; it's risk management.
When you change how the market recognises you, you put at risk the recognition you've built up and the trust of the customers you already have. That risk is worth taking to fix a problem that's costing you money, and hard to justify for anything less.
There's one good reason to rebrand
If your current brand is ugly but effective, bringing in the right enquiries at the right price, leave it alone. Whether anyone likes the logo matters far less than whether it's working.
We only recommend a rebrand when the current identity has become a liability and is getting in the way of the business. The aim is for people to understand what you do faster and to believe you can do it. Done well, that also gives you more room on price. If the real reason is that you're bored of it, buy a new office chair and leave the company's assets alone.
Signs your brand is costing you money
These are the signals we look for. Any one of them on its own might not mean much. If several sound familiar, the brand is probably holding the business back.
You work at the premium end, but the enquiries keep asking for cheap execution. The brand is saying "budget" even when your proposals say otherwise.
Clients flinch at the price, because the packaging doesn't look like it holds anything valuable.
People keep asking "So, do you do X?" or "Are you like such-and-such?"
Your sales team hesitates before sending the website link, because it doesn't match the pitch they've just given.
LinkedIn says one thing, the homepage says another and the pitch deck says a third.
You look like your competitors. Swap the logos and nobody would notice.
It takes too long to explain what you do, and the first call gets used up explaining it.
Before anyone briefs a designer, write down which of these you're trying to fix and what you'd expect to change if it worked: fewer enquiries asking for the cheap version, say, or shorter first calls and less discounting. If nobody can fill that in, you don't have a case for a rebrand yet.
A refresh or a repositioning is often enough
There are degrees of change, and you rarely need the most drastic one. A refresh keeps the name and the logo and tidies up everything around them, from the typography to the inconsistencies that have crept into the colour palette over the years. It's the lowest-risk option, and it can make a company look current without costing it any recognition.
A repositioning keeps the visual identity and changes the story. A firm that has been selling "IT support" starts selling "cybersecurity strategy". The logo stays where it is and the headline changes.
A full rebrand, with a new name and a new identity, is the last resort. It's only warranted when the current brand is doing real damage, reputational or legal, or can't stretch to where the company is going.
Decide what to protect before you change anything
The most expensive mistake in a rebrand is throwing out what was working along with what wasn't. When Tropicana redesigned its orange juice packaging in 2009, the new carton lost the orange with a straw in it, the picture shoppers knew the brand by. Sales reportedly fell by about 20% within two months, and the old packaging was brought back. If your customers know you by a particular colour, shape or phrase, changing it asks them to find you all over again, and not all of them will.
So before we change anything, we audit what needs protecting. A simple place to start is to ask a handful of customers how they'd describe you to someone who hadn't heard of you, and listen for the colour, the symbol or the phrase that keeps coming up. Whatever your market uses to identify you stays, or changes only for a very good reason.
Search is next. A change of name or domain can throw away your search history if it's handled carelessly. Before anything goes live, list every address on the old site, point each one at its new equivalent with a 301 redirect, and update the structured data so it describes the new name.
Existing clients need reassurance too. A client who sees a new look may wonder whether you've been bought out or the management has changed. Tell them what's different and what isn't before they have to ask.
Getting past "I don't like blue"
Rebrands often stall at the point where someone senior decides they don't like blue. Personal taste is the quickest way to derail one, and everyone in the room has some.
The way through is to agree what the new identity has to do before anyone sees a design, and then judge every option against that. So the question put to a design is whether it sets the company apart from the competitors it's most often compared with, and whether it speaks to the buyers everyone agreed matter most. Practical tests belong in there as well, like whether it still reads on a phone.
Agreeing those measures at the start takes most of the ego out of the approvals. The designer is working to a strategy the whole team signed off, and the discussion is about whether the work meets it.
Change the website first and announce it last
A rebrand is a jolt for the people who already know you, so the launch needs sequencing. Switching everything over in a day and posting about it the same afternoon is a good way to confuse your most loyal customers.
The website goes first, because it's where people go to check what's true. Then the everyday material: invoices, email signatures, proposal templates, the sign on the door. It's dull work and it matters, because a new website next to an old invoice makes the whole change look half-done. Have templates that already carry the new identity ready for staff on the first day, or the old one will keep turning up in proposals for months.
Only once all of that is in place is it worth announcing on LinkedIn. By then the announcement confirms something your customers have already started to see for themselves.
Related Brainstorm services and work
Brand strategy and identity services · View identity and website projects · Discuss a rebrand
Updated 24 September 2026. Dave Curtin, founder and Creative Director of Brainstorm, leads website strategy, brand direction and technical delivery for Brainstorm clients.