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Winning rebrands
The Heart FM rebrand has been an ongoing project for the team at BB/Saunders. Kate Evans reveals their logo design tips for a winning revamp Warren Beeby, creative director and founding partner of BB/Saunders, describes their branding process as ‘inside out’. “This means you need to get very close to the centre of what a brand’s about: its values, how the people see what they do, why they do it, who they do it for, and the principles that govern it.” In short, without understanding who a company is and its place in the market, you can’t create a brand that really represents them. The Heart FM team had already done some positional research before BB/Saunders pitched to them. It wanted the station to be more contemporary, but to maintain its ‘feel good’ image – to be about those moments where you think, “I love that tune”. It was important not to come across as too modern, or challenging to listen to – like a dance radio station – and to preserve its warm, friendly perception with its slightly female-biased listenership. The old logo was considered to lack individuality, and needed an element of which they could take ownership. “We worked on this project from conception right through to delivery,” says Beeby. “Radio is a non-visual format, and its marketing tends to work to a set formula. Heart needed an identity that could work everywhere, from its club nights, to shows for relaxing with on a hot summer’s day.”
Kate Evans Editor of Computer Arts Projects, Evans has worked in magazine publishing for seven years. This month she spoke to the BB/ Saunders team about their recent branding work. www.computer arts.co.uk
Skills Understand the market positioning of a brand Redesign and revamp a logo Work with marketing teams on a variety of promotions
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When BB/Saunders was invited to pitch to Heart FM, the logo consisted of a blocky font on a stacked red and blue background in solid colours. “It looked like lots of other logotypes, in two blocks with two bits of information,” Beeby explains. “They wanted to look more relevant, exciting and aspirational – to be more of a contemporary brand. The key words were ‘uplifting, connected and contemporary’.”
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Beeby’s early concepts for the new logo were sketched out. The first ideas revolved around being at the heart of a city, but while a heart-shaped logo was the obvious choice, “Our initial thought was that we shouldn’t use a heart, as Kiss FM had one in their logo”, Beeby reveals. While looking for a way the station could take ownership of its logomark, the idea for a distinctive-looking heart icon came about.
www.computerarts.co.uk
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BB/Saunders Heart fm Rebrand
Route 1 Logo
Winning rebrands BB/Saunders Heart fm Rebrand
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“Having an icon that’s part of a company’s name and logomark shortens the time it takes people to recognise it,” says Beeby. In another of the early ideas, the team experimented with an elongated heart icon, but it was rejected as too many other companies (such as Wall’s ice cream) also use a heart. “It started to feel like it wasn’t theirs and they couldn’t really own it,” Beeby explains.
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As the team worked on making the heart part of the logo, they developed an icon with its own feel: tipped on its edge, the heart represents the lower case ‘a’. “It became something you could evolve and push further,” says Beeby. “We were transforming the icon into something that could be theirs and they could take ownership of.” In this draft, however, the team felt the logo looked too digital – they wanted something softer. BB/Saunders Heart fm Rebrand
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Route 2 Logo
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Heart FM’s brief
Heart wanted the impression of their listenership to be less like a housewife doing the ironing, and to have more of a contemporary edge. They hadn’t done much visual promotional work, BB/Saunders Route 2 fm Rebrand Logo and dated, needed a revamp and refresh. and theirHeart logo, which felt like something that had aged
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“We also wanted to get away from a lot of other radio stations’ icons – including Heart’s old logo – that are in holding shapes and bounding boxes, such as lozenges and rectangles,” Beeby reveals. “Instead we wanted something that could stand up on its own.”
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Further drafts experimented with rounded terminals, but the team decided that these versions looked too soft – more appropriate for a younger brand such as a chocolate bar. “We liked the idea of the ligature that joins the ‘e’ to the ‘a’ though,” Beeby explains. “It fits the idea of connections, bringing people together and joining things up.”
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Project two Redesigning a brand
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In the final logo, the team kept the ligature joining the letter ‘e’ to the heart icon. “We wanted to find a typeface that wasn’t too soft and mushy, with straight edges, so we chose Avant Garde and redrew some parts of it,” Beeby reveals. “We wanted it to look more pure, so we kept the angles – including an angle on the ‘e’ –and spent a lot of time getting them right.”
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Another element of Heart’s rebrand involved replacing Jono Coleman with Jamie Theakston as the breakfast show DJ, and BB/Saunders were asked to design invitations with ‘wow factor’ for Jamie’s launch party. They chose perspex invites, and laser cut a little heart-shape with a small connecting point. Each was individually named, so party-goers could remove their heart and place it in a bowl for a prize draw.
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Billboards were another element of the rebranding campaign. This design was created after Heart acquired a new station in Nottingham; the strapline ‘great song after great song’ was used to introduce Heart’s positioning to its new audience.
www.computerarts.co.uk
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Winning rebrands
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The Heart brand extends beyond the radio station to club nights, and the new heart logotype and heart icon have been used on many brand extensions, such as a range of flyers that were produced. On this example, the background consists of lots of little heart icons, demonstrating the flexibility of the logo. “It can either be a hero or just a support element for decoration,” says Beeby. Here the hearts were individually spot varnished.
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The original red and blue colours from the old logo were updated to give a fresher, more modern look. Complementary shades were also introduced that enabled the brand to evolve, and gradients were included in the style guide.
Measuring success
Shortly after rebranding, Heart (London) rose from number three in the RAJAR listener figures to number one. “Of course, it takes more than a new logo to do that, but we like to think of it as really good karma,” say the BB/Saunders team.
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Always work with your printers on branding projects to get the best results. “When producing these flyers, we worked with the printer and pushed our budgets,” Beeby explains. The spot varnish on these club classics flyers was no more expensive than the old flyers, which were glossed all over on both sides. BB/Saunders tried to do everything as economically as they could, and Heart was surprised by what they could achieve within the budget.
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****Note:
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i like you email me
Turn up your Christmas Description:
Heart
Summer of Love
Coasters/ Tote bag
/su m m er
Kate, these can be used individually and I’ll supply a single bird etc...
Heart organised various disconnected marketing promotions, including events in Soho Square and open air gigs, which BB/Saunders linked together under the ‘Summer of love’ sub-brand with this bird. The message was “a little bird told me, this is going on”, and was also used in an online messaging service, where friends could be invited by email from Heart’s website. “Like the angled heart icon, the birds that represented the ‘Summer of love’ campaign were a distinctive brand element – it becomes part of your visual language,” Beeby explains.
Official Radio Station 14 West “Another advantage of the for End Christmas heart shape is that you can extrude it and
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make it three-dimensional,” says Beeby; these various transformations into 3D Christmas baubles were used for Heart’s festive promotional materials. As well as creating branded Christmas cards for Heart, the BB/Saunders team were involved in branding Heart’s initiatives, such as their sponsorship of the ‘Light up London’ Christmas lights.
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Description:
Another brand extension, the ‘retox’ event is an annual club night based on the Friday-night Club Classics show. The old identity was based around a cocktail glass, but BB/Saunders created a design more fitting for the Fabric club environment.
www.computerarts.co.uk
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