THE STORY
Despite the pandemic and by 2021, Impact networking had been experiencing exponential growth of an average of 24% a year for 3 years running. Notwithstanding this success, they were in dire need of a brand refresh as the brand was suffering from dated and inconsistent design and overall lack of identity all-together. Sales enablement materials and digital content were lacking in tone and unity. Impact sought out to find a solution within the corporate marketing team by hiring a lead creative to home in the brand and create a new vision moving forward to help take the brand to the next level through this exponential growth.
THE OBJECTIVE
Give the impact brand a shot to the arm while respecting its foundations and beliefs. Refresh the brand’s identity and create new brand guidelines without templatizing to allow more creative liberties in design moving forward. Take away the stigma of a corporate company and create an approachable brand voice that speaks to mid-sized business that need help and the everyday people that run them.
THE RESULT
I came on board in 2021 ready to take on a team of designers that had been working off of a 2-page guideline book that had a logo, 2 fonts and a tagline. Within 6 months I created a new brand guideline that was based on a more artful approach. The first step was taking on the logo itself. It was Impact’s only recognizable asset which was valuable in my opinion. But deconstructing it by liberating the icon from the letters, and not being afraid to use the assets in single color versions that work with our palette, elevated the brand to a more modern place. Overall, taking a minimalist and more digestible approach with our font choices and materials will helped us appear more professional and approachable. Today’s world is filled with so much visual stimulation, it’s smart to remember that more is sometimes less. I also thought we need to have some fun with the brand, and to not take ourselves too seriously.
The design team understood my initial vision immediately, and we were able to quickly modernize our look and feel in a beautiful way without shocking the system. With a fresh perspective on design thinking that rarely has limits and will never feel “corporate” Impact will be set up to stand apart from the competition. The Impact branding of the future will most certainly be recognized as ‘Impact’ but will never be templatized, allowing designers to be artfully expressive in every channel we show up in, creating more meaningful brand moments.
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