The Cambridge Systematics (CS) 12-year-old identity did not reflect the company’s brand aspirations of forward motion, energy, confidence and flexibility. CS’ in-house marketing strategy and design professionals partnered with Myriad to develop a new logo and tagline to close this gap.
Discovery included an internal survey; two years of client satisfaction data; interviews with 15 representative clients; and a broad-based brand perception survey. Analysis: our visual brand should engender an assured, engaged, intrigued and excited audience; and project approachable, serious, passionate, confident, intelligent and forward-thinking professionals.
Our advisory group, representing all business units and a wide range of years in career and at the company, challenged us to creatively demonstrate action, future thinking, pragmatism, and tailoring to clients’ needs or situations.
The resulting logo features dimensionality (it is based on an origami model), suggests a road forward, includes past logo colors while adding new hues to embrace our history and momentum, incorporates elements we can recombine in graphic applications, and is abstract enough for each audience member to connect from his or her point of view. Full capitalization of the name represents confidence, with a humanistic typeface for approachability. The incorporated tagline begins with a rotating action word that draws from a pool of 30 options, recombines elements of the mark, and ends in “forward.”
We announced gradually via eBlast and social media as we ramped up for a major client event that generated overwhelming excitement and engagement. As our audience responded, they articulated precisely the messages we intended.
Cambridge Systematics Re-branding
Category
Corporate Identity > Corporate Identity-Re-branding
Description
Cambridge Systematics
Cambridge, MA
Winner Status
- 3rd Place