The inside story of a brand redesign (part 1 of 3)

You know that friend who is always rearranging her furniture? Looking for something new, fresh and better?

That’s just like the folks here at Adwerx. Restless reinventors. And so we embarked on creating a new brandmark to help us set the tone for all our marketing and messaging. Not a slight undertaking, to say the least.

Our design team took on the task with gusto. In searching for a symbol of what Adwerx does and the value it creates, the idea of a target came up. Adwerx brings sophisticated, targeted advertising technology to people who aren’t professional marketers themselves. So targets make perfect sense, right?

That is, until you consider that Adwerx targeting technology is incredibly flexible. We can target thousands of different zip codes for brand ads, and target listing ads to people within a 15 mile radius of a property. Considering the countless variations of targets our customers can reach, is Adwerx really best represented by a target?

The symbolism was almost there, it just needed a tiny tweak. And the tweak was this: within the whole target metaphor, Adwerx itself isn’t the target. Adwerx is the arrow. We build an ultra-simplistic arrow for real estate agents and make it brilliantly simple to aim.

Once the focus of an icon for the brand shifted from a target to an arrow, the main question was how to style it. Literal translations, complete with feathers and shafts, looked out of place and actually took focus away from the symbolism. So how to convey an arrow but include a technology angle?

So many tech companies these days who use geolocation or geospatial platforms adopt the “pin” as their symbol. But the pin always stands for something or someone that is elsewhere. There might be hundreds or thousands of pins on a map. But when you want that map to reflect you, to meet you where you currently are, you tap a different symbol. That symbol is an arrow. An ultra-simplistic arrow. One that happens to look great next to a capital “A.” Thus, the new Adwerx arrow took form and the new brand was underway.

Stay tuned as we reveal our new look this Friday.