Involving the Team in a Brand Relaunch.

The company I work for is currently working on a new corporate identity. But instead of puttering around on it behind closed doors they decided that they want to include the team in this process. And I quite agree with what they did.

When starting the work on the new design system they asked who of the personnel would want to be involved. Out of the people that expressed interest they selected 25 individuals that are representative for the whole company so that all age groups, jobs, genders and locations are covered.

These people where then presented with the ideas and the concept behind three different design “routes”. Each of the routes points towards a slightly different direction for the same brand. The Team was able to give feedback and express their impressions but also concerns.

When doing design work there is no “right way”. Just a lot of wrong ones. Not only does each coworker have a different taste in what they find visually pleasing, but also a different perception of what feelings they receive by looking at a particular design. In the process of coming up with a new corporate identity, a set of rules about how to communicate as a company via text and images, this limits the number of people being involved.

Yet it is desired to create something a majority of colleagues can agree and identify with. Involving them in the process greatly improves peoples connection to the new brand.

The feedback of the 25, if listened to, can help to fine tune a design. They will also help explaining the process and the decisions to the rest of the company.

I think it is great to involve the team in such kind of decisions. It is impossible to create a brand relaunch that everyone will totally agree with, but by knowing what is about to come and being able to provide feedback is a great way to improve the satisfaction with a new design. I think a similar approach is applicable to a lot of smaller scale design work as well.