How to Know When It's Time to Rebrand
Seriously. Its time.
Okay class, Marketing 101 time!
-
I've been thinking a lot about branding... and rebranding lately. Not because I'm bored of my logo or feel like changing colors. Those things have always felt secondary to me. A brand has never lived in a typeface or a palette. It lives in the stories you tell, the questions you keep asking, and the perspective that quietly develops over years of paying attention.
The strange thing about building something over a long period of time is that you rarely notice yourself changing while it's happening. You write one article, then another, then another. You travel. You meet people. You lose people. You become obsessed with subjects you never imagined would matter to you. Looking back, each story feels unrelated. Looking forward, they begin to reveal a pattern thats been there the whole time.
When I first started elsewhere, I thought I knew what this journal was supposed to be. I had categories in mind. I had a vision for the kinds of “publications” I wanted to share. But life has a funny way of ignoring our outlines. Somewhere between wolves, Palestine, graphic design, branding, music, films, conservation, photography, and travel, I realized I wasn't drifting away from my original purpose. I was getting closer to it.
It made me wonder whether a rebrand is ever really about changing directions. We tend to treat it like an act of reinvention, as though everything that came before was somehow incorrect. I don't think that's true, I think the strongest rebrands don't erase the past. They reveal what was always there but hadn't fully come into focus yet.
That's why so many people wait too long. They become loyal to the version of themselves that built the brand instead of the person they've become while building it. They keep introducing themselves with yesterday's language because it's familiar, even when their work has already moved on.
Nature never seems to have this problem. Forests regenerate after fires. Rivers carve entirely new paths over centuries. Coastlines are reshaped by tides that never ask permission. Nothing in the natural world mistakes change for failure. Growth isn't treated as a betrayal of what came before. It's simply evidence that something is still alive.
That's the way to think about rebranding. Not as starting over, but as catching your identity up to your evolution. Every project changes the person creating it. Every conversation leaves something behind. Every story reshapes the storyteller and their business a little more.
At some point, the question stops being whether your brand still represents your work. It becomes whether it still represents you.
Rebranding is like getting a haircut.
You don't wake up one morning and suddenly despise the person staring back at you. More often than not, you catch your reflection and realize you've been carrying around a version of yourself that no longer feels like you. The haircut isn't about becoming someone else. It's about revealing the person who's been there all along.
A brand can feel the same way. One day you notice you're spending more time maintaining an identity than growing into a new one. The ideas have changed. The work has changed. You've changed. Yet you're still introducing yourself with yesterday's language.
So how do you know it's time?
When your current identity starts feeling heavier than your future. When maintaining your brand takes more energy than growing it. When the business people see no longer reflects the person building it. That's usually your sign.
The healthiest thing you can do isn't start over. It's to trim away everything and everyone that no longer reflects who you've become, making room for the next version of yourself to grow naturally.
View Our Portfolio to see some of our rebrands:
Near Sacramenno?
Visit my Shaaaaayla at Menno Beauty.
not everything is meant to be gate kept.
- See you offline
How We’re Feeling Today:
Why this song?
Every journal ends with a song because stories aren't only meant to be read. Sometimes you need to hear them too.
Some goodbyes don't have to be dramatic.
Sometimes it's simply saying, "Okay... love you, bye." To the version of yourself you've outgrown. To the logo that no longer feels like you. To the messaging you've been meaning to rewrite. To the dead ends you've been carrying simply because they've always been there.
Lyrics Worth Noting:
“Okay, dont be smart.
Who do you think you are?”
Do with that as you may.
— see you offline.