When A Simple Logo
Isn’t The Best Choice
STRAIGHTFORWARD LOGOS ARE EASY TO LOVE. BUT ARE THEY ALWAYS
BETTER? NOT WHEN YOUR BRAND IS COMPLEX.
Mark Wilson
Betaworks is known as a hip, media-focused company out
of New York, which probably made it sting when somebody
on Twitter equated the company’s logo to a coffee stain. It
was time to rebrand. After months of creative back and forth,
when a new logo came in from creative agency Franklyn, it
wasn’t love at first sight.
“We saw it, and we were like, ‘Oh.’” explains CEO John
Borthwick. “It wasn’t, ‘Oh my god, I hate that, that’s terrible!’
It was, “Oh, what is that?”
The logo wasn’t an ode to a basic geometric shape, like so
many classic logos tend to be. It was a chunky, vague thing
with several overlapping components. You could just discern
Old logo (top), new logo (bottom)
an arrow, but aside from that, making logic from its lines was
like lying on the grass and staring at a cloud: You could see
nothing and anything.
“I had a strong reaction to it. Which is different from not
liking it!” Borthwick clarifies--maybe hedging a bit in the
20/20 vision of hindsight. “My first observation was that I
had a strong reaction, and that’s what pulls me back again
to take another look. I wondered ‘What is this reaction I’m
having?’ and I sort of worked through ‘Do I like this or do I
not like this?”
Then he consulted Creative Director James Cooper and “this
least likely candidate became the most likely fast.”