Sticking with what you have is easy. Tackling your own brand takes time, commitment and a thick skin. We have 2 out of the 3 but who has time these days anyway?

Over the last few years, Rolley has grown into something our brand no longer reflected. We're a creative development studio, we both design and build the digital products, tools and experiences that help ambitious clients lead their markets. The work we’d been doing for others had outgrown the way we were presenting it. We needed to evaluate who we are now and how we show that to people – an ‘how we rolley’ if you will.

Here's a run down of how it went for us, the ideas that made it, the ones that didn't, and the big lesson we learned on the way – that the real value of a rebrand isn't in the visuals. It's in the process of working out who you are, who your audience is, and how you connect with them.

The brief

We kept it deliberately simple:

"Explore our existing brand and identify a visual system that reflects the cutting-edge, high-quality, market-leading work that we produce."

Put plainly, our brand, and our website above all, needed to reflect us, the work we do, and the clients we partner with.

With the brief agreed, we all jumped into a Miro board and started dropping in ideas, keywords, targets, values and aspirations. This is quite possibly the most important part of the whole thing – making sure everyone's involved, feels part of it, and agrees on a single direction.

That's when the patterns start to form. The same thoughts reoccur, the same descriptors keep coming up, and you can feel the excitement build as everyone realises you're onto something that feels right.

Rolley Miro Board

Strategy

Out of that discovery session came a set of adjectives we all agreed describe who we are:

Dependable. Expert. Collaborative. Enabling. Cutting-Edge.

These words position us perfectly, they say who we are and how we approach our work and relationships with our clients.

For us, none of this was a surprise, we have a lot of experience in the team and our attitude is always to go above and beyond. But seeing it laid out that plainly gives you clarity and helps guide the way you approach your tone of voice and visual identity.

It became the thing we measured every decision against: does this sound dependable? Does it feel cutting-edge?

Visual identity exploration and results

To develop our brand into the visual representation of our values, we needed to think beyond a logo and a bunch of colours, and build a visual identity that would position the company for its next chapter. We needed something that actually articulates who Rolley is and the kind of work we do.

Cutting Edge

The result was the Rolley Cutting-Edge. We took the profile of our logo and turned it into the foundation of our entire visual language, and, as it turned out, a hook for our new tone of voice too. It captured everything we'd talked about in those early sessions, and added the sense of forward motion and energy we'd been looking for.

During the ideation phase, we decided that we would keep our logo as it is - but that didn't stop us experimenting anyway! Sometimes, you have to try a few things to make you realise you’re happy with what you have.

Rolley Experiment

Over the coming weeks, we developed a whole new brand book with our website as the focal point. We'd thrown so many ideas at the website that we ended up needing brand assets well beyond what we'd planned for, including 3D character work and 3D animation.

Learnings

Are we happy with where we landed, definitely!

We all feel more confident and better equipped meeting potential partners. We’ve got a collection of case studies that demonstrate our cutting-edge capabilities, and a site that represents us when we’re not there. We have documents and templates ready to roll that any of us can pick up and use, and an asset library to support communications, proposals and socials.

Most importantly, the way we talk about ourselves is finally clear and consistent across the team, and we've built custom tools and experiences that show what we can do rather than just describe it.

Measurables

Measurables from a rebrand can be hard to put in place. When we started out, we decided that it wasn’t about site visits and social clicks and more about longer term results. We wanted to establish ourselves as a team of dependable experts that can deliver great creative development projects. Our measurables for this being a success are:

Retaining existing relationships. Keeping the partners we already have, and staying their first call when they need help.

Winning the right new work. Not just any work, but the kind where we add the most value.

Perception. Clearly demonstrating our expertise so we attract the right audience.

Where we are now

It's been five months since we launched our new site and brand, and call it a coincidence, but we're busier than ever! We’re receiving more enquiries from organisations that are looking for specialist digital expertise, and clients are also taking advantage of our new creative service offering, trusting us to develop their brand and creative output.

Being able to play a part in our client's journeys has been a lot of fun, helping them to innovate and push harder to become leaders in their market by using groundbreaking technology.

And with our own brand, we’ve found that you don't have to go big, you don't need to change everything or follow current trends. The true value of a rebrand is in the process of defining who you are, who your audience is and how you connect with them.