From the course: Fundamentals of a Redesign

Case study: Changing direction

From the course: Fundamentals of a Redesign

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Case study: Changing direction

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- We talked about the reasons for a redesign. It may be due to a change in leadership, new goals, or a different audience focus. But there are times when the business itself is changing direction. In these instances, the equity of the old brand is weighed against the positives of a new product or service. Let's look at a few case studies. For the first part of the 20th century, broadcast companies worked in radio. Their logos and communication materials were microphones and electrical symbols. In the early 1950s, the addition of television forced a change. Now they needed to communicate the idea of visuals. A good example of this is the Columbia Broadcast System. The name was shortened to the CBS acronym. This removed the word broadcast and is less specific, allowing CBS to move into any business. The logo evolved from an illustration of a microphone to a simplified symbol of an eye. More imagery of the new television stars replaced copy-heavy advertising. Today, we think of CBS only as a television network, not a radio broadcasting company. In the late 1990s, I was asked to redesign the logo for VH1, MTVs sister network. I looked at the logo and visual materials, spoke with the executive team, gathered information from users, and looked at ratings. It became apparent that the problem was not VH1's logo. The programming itself was unclear. Comedy specials, recordings of concerts, music videos, and reruns of sitcoms gave the viewer and advertisers a muddled sense. The solution was to change the focus of programming from this mashup to an idea VH1 could own the history of American popular music. I redesigned the logo to include the words music first to remind the internal and external audience that the only focus was music, no comedy specials, sitcoms, or random programming. The visual materials integrated classic rock-and-roll and documentary-style photography, a nod to classic Rolling Stone magazine, and different from the standard PR photos supplied to everyone. And I made a pallette based on blue. This referred to the blues, Elvis Presley's Blue Suede Shoes or Linda Ronstadt's Blue Bayou. The network saw 150% increase in ratings. The in-house department had a clear sense of the communication and the audience associated VH1 with the shows like Behind the Music or Concert of the Century. If I had simply designed a new logo, nothing would change except the logo bug in the corner of the screen. It was my job as an expert to point out the need for a change in the product.

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