The challenge of changing such an established brand is that it needs to remain recognizable to current stakeholders while being different enough to attract new memberships. After playing around with several concepts, I decided to move forward with clean text, geometric shapes, and the most timeless color combination for core brand materials: black and white. This also applied to our current partnerships, like with the Arizona Coyotes hockey team (see the Howl for SunWest handout).
In order to maintain the trustworthy reputation in the community, the Marketing Director and I decided to roll out the brand refresh in phases. First, refresh the layout and design direction of several key marketing pieces and campaigns, roll out the new logo, and finally, the most daunting part, update the website.
Since we ran into placement and legibility issues with the old logo, we knew the new logo had to be clean and easily identifiable. The two red strokes emulate the "sun" with a pop of red and the Century Gothic font is easy to read and scale across multiple platforms.
We received positive and helpful feedback on the first roll out of re-branded marketing materials from staff and members alike. Some members were resistant to change like we anticipated, and other were excited about the new direction. Many new members thought that SunWest didn't look like a bank, which was our goal. The responses when we launched the new logo were overwhelmingly positive; even competitor credit unions reached out to our team with congratulatory messages. The website launch was another success - that story can be found by clicking the button below.
I won an award for this rebrand from Graphic Design USA.
