In Two Minds: The rebrand that almost failed.
18 months ago, we set out to rebrand our studio. We came up with a new name. Built the brand. Designed the website. Everything.
The new name was Raven. It was to represent transformation. It sounded quite cool. It would be black and white. Minimal. Understated. It all looked good in our heads. But as soon as we started to write the messaging, we realised that wasn’t right.
It felt serious. A little distant. And it lacked the one thing we value most in our work: character. So we sat with it for a while – too long – trying to make it fit. But no amount of colour tweaking or copywriting could fix the fact that it just wasn’t right.
We almost gave up, but instead decided to start again.
DO + U
In 2015, the studio launched with the name DO, David’s initials. It was functional and worked when it was just one person.
But for almost 10 years, the studio hasn’t just been David, but Carolyn as well. We’re a duo in life and a duo in business, so the simple solution; add ‘U’ to DO. Adding the ‘U’ brings Carolyn into the name – elegant, meaningful and a little bit clever. This is the kind of thinking we pride ourselves of in our day-to-day client work, but had somehow overlooked for ourselves.
With DUO established, our minds felt freer. We found our tone again: bold, warm, a little bit weird. The visual identity has a simple typographic logo at its core, supported by illustrations of our stupid heads, punchy colours, and a sense of fun. We had no interest of being like everyone else and we hope that this new approach attracts people that appreciate a bit of individuality.
FAIL. LEARN. TRY AGAIN.
Branding yourself is fucking hard. You’re too close. You overthink. You second-guess. But if there’s one thing we learned, it’s that sometimes you need to give things time to simmer and, if needs be, chuck it all out and start again.
This project took time and, in the end, was not just a rebrand, but also a reset.
However, fancy new clothes haven’t changed us. We are still providing our clients big agency brains without the big agency bloat and always endeavour to bring some joy into the creative industry.
Our first rebrand might have failed, but we’re better for it, learned from it and are now extremely proud to be DUO.
Interest in working with us? Tough.
Only joking. Email us
