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1. Diagnostic
I think that any redesign contains about five distinct phases. The first is the diagnostic phase and the diagnostic phase is a fact finding mission. You are looking to understand the current marketplace. You are looking to understand what the current brand is doing, how it’s behaving, how it’s competitors are behaving, what are analogous and adjacent brands that might be influencing behavior. What are new upstarts that might be changing the marketplace? So it’s a diagnostic understanding of what is happening today. And I use the term diagnostic in the same way that a doctor might use diagnostic, really understanding the lay of the land. What is currently happening in the marketplace? What is currently happening with your brand? What is happening around the brand? What is happening culturally, do a bit of a cultural reconnaissance, to understand what is happening anthropologically, to understand what’s happening behaviorally what’s happening economically, what’s happening creatively.
2. Projective
All of those things really impact what the view of the brand is right now. Using that information armed with all of that information, you can then begin to start to craft projective pathways that the brand could potentially go. This is a very safe place in this second phase to begin to understand what the possibilities are. Project, think about where the brand could go. It’s an opportunity that’s only bounded by your imagination. Where could the brand go tomorrow? You understand where the brand is today, knowing that, where could the brand go tomorrow? And here’s an opportunity to really test. Projectively, you can create stimulus, you can create new identities, you can create new package design. You can create new color ways. New website pages, new social media posts. Really begin to experiment where the brand could go tomorrow. And you just want to create directional guidance. This isn’t, “this is where we’re going.” This is possibilities of where we could journey next. You can then take that to the stakeholders. You can take that to a board. You could take that to consumers in market research. You can take that to the CEO. It’s tangible, palpable ways to experience what your new brand could potentially be.
3. Exploratory
Then once you begin to collect that information, whether you are doing market research, whether the data you’re collecting is all internal, you could be then begin to go into phase three, which is an exploratory. And that is a somewhat tempered exploration of where you are actually going to go. Phase three is all about moments in time that we can take this brand to. And so you’re really looking at more fully thought out identity design, package design, overarching look and feel. In my experience, between six and 10 options seems to be the sweet spot.
The older I get, the more impatient I’ve gotten with choice. And I’ve liked to show three to five. Although the master, Massimo Vignelli, insisted on only showing one. I believe Paul Rand did as well. They felt like they’re the experts. You want my opinion, this is what you should do. So I think depending on your confidence and your level of success in, in the field, you can decide how many options you think is best to show your, your client about where to go.
4. Implementation
Once you have aligned on that – and now that alignment can take quite a long time, it’s often very political – the next step is the implementation, which is really just taking everything that has been decided about that final design and executing it across everything that is encompassing the brand. Every touchpoint.
5. Launch
There’s so much now that goes into introducing a rebrand, that past the implementation there’s the fifth phase, which is the launch strategy. And that is really determining now how you reintroduce this brand in the marketplace. A launch strategy is critical in helping to manage the emotions of the people that are going to see this redesign. And the better the launch strategy, the better the chances consumers have of understanding what you’ve done, understanding why you’ve done it, and appreciating it.
So those are the five categories. First, the diagnostic phase, understanding the current marketplace. Then the projective work, understanding the possibilities of the future. Then the exploratory, really solidifying the possibilities for the future and creating tangible deliverables to show what that is then implementing all of those decisions into every touchpoint of the design and of the brand. And then finally the launch strategy, and that is introducing your brand to the culture.