“Never to forget where we came from and always praise the bridges that carried us over”
Fannie Lou Hamer
Heritage is a powerful concept that seeks to shape identity and connect one to its roots. It encompasses the traditions, values, and stories passed down through generations, influencing the present and guiding the future. Ultimately, this provides a consistent sense of stability and continuity across decades, centuries, and even millenia. Heritage is often connected with anthropology and culture, but I believe that it is possible to transfer this idea to branding through the notion of a ‘brand heritage’.
My initial brief for Markd Global rebranding was simple: I had to visually turn an Australian-centric marketing company into a global, human-centric and purpose-driven brand. This was a giant task – especially for someone who hadn’t actually done a rebrand before – and while challenging, I was confident due to my belief in having strong reasoning behind each creative decision.
For me, aesthetics alone aren’t enough; there must be a deep reason behind every creative choice. Without this strong rationale, designs can feel empty in a way that’s hard to pinpoint but noticeable to me. Driven by this belief, I approached the rebrand with a focus on having the strongest possible rationales. This method formed the basis of what I now call ‘Markd Global’s brand heritage.’ To develop this heritage and guide my creative decisions, I began with the company’s brand story.
IDENTIFYING THE BRAND STORY
I spent considerable time with Sibon Schouten, the CEO and Founder of Markd Global, to understand her vision for the company. She emphasised the importance of leadership in addressing today’s societal challenges, but these core values weren’t reflected in the current visual identity, causing a disconnect. I learned that Markd Global was still early in its story, lacking enough brand recognition to support a successful complete overhaul. With this insight, I decided to use the existing visuals as a foundation, making small adjustments to better align the branding with the company’s vision and values.
The most crucial step in working towards creating this alignment was identifying Markd Global’s ‘concept buzzwords’. In a rapid exercise that sought to deliver quantity over quality, I listed words related to the company without worrying about overlap or connection, focusing only on their relevance to Markd Global’s identity.
With this list, I narrowed them down, prioritising words with visual connotations. For example, while ‘humble’ and ‘warm’ are similar, ‘warm’ has stronger aesthetic implications. By focusing on aesthetically-linked words instead of abstract, the design process can flow a lot smoother later on.
Ultimately, I determined that the visual rebrand should feel warm and organic to match the human-centric business model, while maintaining professionalism and a sense of timelessness was also imperative to the company’s values. There wasn’t necessarily a prescribed number of keywords to hone in on, I chose enough to explore visually without overwhelming myself.
When I had to later present this exercise and my findings, I created a quick moodboard based on these keywords. Moodboards are excellent for visualising and aligning creative direction, preventing confusion that words alone might cause. Below is Markd Global’s conceptual moodboard:
Taking the time to develop the shortlist of keywords was invaluable to the process of creating Markd Global’s company heritage. This simple and quick methodology provided objective direction, allowing me to rationalise every visual choice and ensure alignment with the company’s core values. And while I’ve emphasised the importance of establishing a brand heritage, some might wonder why this process would matter to consumers.
THE RISK OF LOST HERITAGE
The late-2010’s saw an influx of the rebranding of fashion houses, and near the end of the decade, an image went viral showcasing the evolution of these brands (see above). These fashion houses saw their unique logotypes standardise into a boring minimalist modern style: sans serif, capitalised letters, black on a white background. I remember seeing this picture myself and thinking it was sad how the individuality of these brands were stripped away.
And it’s not just fashion houses—many companies rebrand to widen profit margins and attract more consumers, neglecting their history and heritage. By chasing modern trends, they often create controversial rebrands that confuse consumers and lose money. It’s a lose-lose situation.
While some of these companies do end up quietly returning to their original branding (e.g. GAP and Mastercard), others will build on the company’s heritage to direct their next rebrand. This phenomenon has been known as the ‘retro rebrand’, and two notable cases of this are Burger King and Burberry.
Burberry
Since its 1901 establishment, the Burberry logo (then Burberrys) has featured an illustration of an equestrian knight carrying a flag (with the Latin word ‘Prorsum’ – meaning ‘forward’) with the brand name written underneath in a serif style font. This essence of this logo remained for 117 years until their minimalist rebranding in 2018, completely removing the serif font and imagery. 5 years later In 2023, Burberry underwent a new transformation, this time reworking the original illustrated knight and font, returning to a serif style.
Burger King
The origins of Burger King’s newest logo (unveiled during its 2021 rebrand) can be traced back to 1969 – 52 years prior.While one could argue that Burger King’s real heritage can be found from its 1953 inception, it was acquired by the Pillsbury Company in 1967, and it was this acquisition that has allowed for Burger King to have the cultural relevance it has today.
After 30 years of the same logo (with a small revision in 1994), Burger King completely reworked its logo, featuring brand new fine details, a new form, and a new colour palette. While this logo lasted a lot longer than Burberry (22 years), its next brand iteration saw the design return to its original form, as if the logo was directly worked off its 1994 version. The designer behind the 2021 rebrand, Lisa Smith, directly refers to Burger King’s heritage as a design rationale, explaining in an interview: “The new logo pays homage to the brand’s heritage with a refined design that’s confident, simple and fun”.
By anchoring the Markd Global rebrand in the company’s story, I created a foundation that honours its roots while supporting its growth, which I have now called its ‘brand heritage’. Any type of creative branding is time-consuming and costly, and I would rather have a brand that moves forward slowly rather than jumping the gun and having to retract at a later point. And when looking at the successful rebrands in recent years, it’s clear that brands that preserve their heritage receive more praise.
