Over the course of two years, the vision has been further refined, and because KCC is essentially a “replant” of a church, the “culture” of the church has changed drastically over two years.  I helped redesign the interior of the church, bringing in modern colors and lighting to the space, and the church is now doing lots of outreach.  In addition, the style of the meetings has changed to a cutting edge experience.  It became clear to me that my 2007 identity had quickly become outdated.  Normally a brand/identity will last much longer than two years, but in special cases, an identity can become outdated if the vision, mission, values or corporate culture of the organization change in large measure.  In KCC’s case, the corporate culture changed enough to cause a disconnect with the identity.  What KCC needed was not a redesign; rather a realign was the best option because the core vision and values had not changed; just the atmosphere of the church.

I kept the basic premise of the brand intact, but updated the typography, adjusted the color scheme and proportions to show a more cutting-edge, modern aesthetic, along with more aggression.  KCC is a church with a lot of forward motion, so the new identity had to reflect that.

The logotype was originally Myriad Pro with Garamond Premier Pro as the subtitle.  They had been chosen for a clean-but-creative look.  For the realigned identity, I chose Bree Extra Bold Oblique for the title and Zapatista for the subtitle.  Bree is a typeface with a pleasing upright-italic feel that exhibits lots of creative flair—KCC has lots of artists and a public art gallery in its building—and Zapatista is an aggressive grungy typewriter font.  I proportioned everything inside the Golden Ratio (a.k.a. Divine Ratio) to show a sense of order amid all the gutteral grunge treatments.  I also removed the vintage surround of the identity to demonstrate the shift from history to future.

My 2007 (top) and 2009 (bottom) logos

The realigned identity is being implemented slowly, as needs arise. This is done to keep costs down for this [essentially] young church.

Take, for instance the United Parcel Service (UPS) logo:

UPS Logo - Old and New

The old logo, designed by Paul Rand was actually amazing.  It’s actually quite a bit stronger than the new logo, but the change to the new logo was the right move to make.  UPS successfully grew it’s “UPS” brand to be a globally recognized force.  It’s rare to hear someone call the company “United Parcel Service”; rather, everyone instantly equates “UPS” to package delivery.  The old logo was a big part of making that happen, with the symbolism of a package at the top and a shield on the bottom, combining the ideas of parcel, strength and safety.  As the company came into the new century, their customer base had grown younger, more modern, and more demanding.  In addition, UPS no longer had to “spell out” the parcel nature of the business.  Therefore, the shift away from depicting a package, and more toward a modern interpretation of a shield was an excellent choice.  The new logo is a perfect example of a design realign – it kept the “soul” of the original identity, but got rid of extraneous elements.

Here’s a link to the article that got me thinking about this:

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/redesignrealign

My one disagreement with the List Apart article is that I think there are more times where a redesign is necessary than Mr. Moll gives credit for.  There are internal company issues that can be helped by a redesign.  Often a company can become mired in sundry ruts, from the way employees view the company, to the way customer support treats their employess, and often a corporate identity redesign can help everyone in the company to get jolted out of those ruts.  Therefore, often times a redesign benefits the company in ways other than attracting new clientele or better serving the current customer base.

However, it remains a good question to ask, and a good reminder to all of us designers – don’t jump the gun to a full redesign!  It will require more planning and work, but it could be that a realignment will better serve your clients.