rebuilding the durkan group brand foundation
If this is your first visit to www.durkangroup.com in a while, you might find yourself doing a double take. While our joy for the craft, passion for our team, and dedication to the grind remains the same, it’s safe to say there are very few visual breadcrumbs from the past to be found on our site today. In a field where we pitch everything from brand “refreshes” (“What if we just straightened out the corners of your logo? What if we changed from one shade of green to another shade of green?”) to full rebrands (“What if we update everything so it feels 100% you?????”), the work we’ve been doing internally for the past 15+ months categorically falls into the absolutely-overhauled-built-from-the-ground-up rebrand category.
To us, in order to feel confident in practicing what we preach, we knew it was about damn time that we took a hard look at ourselves. The problem was, many internal efforts to “redo the site” had fallen flat over the years; so much so that by the time I joined the team in February 2024, overhauling the site was being referred to as ‘DG7’…because we were well into the 7th mini update or “refresh” of the site.
What stood out to me as I got my footing in my new role leading the design team is how everyone seemed to be talking exclusively about the site. All the early conversations we had about DG7 seemed to overlook the most important, foundational part…the brand itself. When we began to shine a light on our visual identity, it became abundantly clear that very little, if any, of the brand had intentional thought put behind it. If no one on our team could answer such basic questions such as where did the logo come from, or why we used the color yellow, how could we expect any client to trust us to give them intentional results?
If no one on our team could answer such basic questions such as where did the logo come from, or why we used the color yellow, how could we expect any client to trust us to give them intentional results?
This “we just want to refresh our website” ideology is something that we hear day in and day out from clients. Their time and money is valuable and scarce; they believe the best use of their resources is to update the heavy hitter: their website. The problem with this approach is that unless your brand has laid a strong foundation, refreshing your website in a silo is like building a house on shaky ground…it probably won’t last very long. This singular process often lacks the longevity, intentionality and impact that comes with evaluating your brand and digital experience as a cohesive unit.
It didn’t take long to get the whole team on board with redoing our foundation before tackling the house; we knew the arguments for this approach because we’ve preached it so many times ourselves. It was time to put our money where our mouth was.
We set out to treat ourselves like we would any other client: we set up a weekly status call, created Figjam boards and Teamwork tickets, and set up interviews with stakeholders (aka our founder, Niall). But before we could even think about logo creation or putting Illustrator pen nib to artboard, we set about conducting our typical research and discovery process. Though brand research and the activities we conduct can vary, four pillars remain the same:
In order to figure out where you want to go, you need to figure out where you’re at. We dumped the logo, full-page screenshots of the current site, blobs of the color palette, and existing marketing materials into the first page of many in our “DG7 Research & UX” Figjam. The board quickly became littered with sticky notes, emojis, stickers and redlines; was there anything we liked? Was there anything we had a visceral reaction to? What was worth keeping, and what was worth sending to the graveyard?
It was during this analysis that we did preliminary research into the associations behind the primary color in our brand: yellow. Color analysis is a key component to any brand deep dive; while you may be using the color green because you’re a nature lover and avid National Parks visitor, it’s crucial to understand how green is being perceived both in the world and in your space. Does it represent the qualities you want your brand to emulate? This quickly proved false in our case. Studies showed yellow being heavily associated with caution, speed, low cost, safety, construction (none of which aligned with our studio); it also appeared as one of the consistently lowest rated colors in favorability studies (…and no one wants that).
With the analysis fresh in our minds, we immediately pivoted into one of my nonnegotiable brand activities: worddumping. During every early stage client call, interview, brainstorm and planning session, I keep a jumbly mess of words compiled of common words and phrases that crop up. A deceptively simple task, I’ve found that this activity helps clear out my brain of swirling thoughts and allows me to visually seek out patterns and commonalities amongst the chaos.
We broke up our worddumping into two sectors: current and future state. It quickly became clear that we were all on the same page about our current brand experience feeling dated, disjointed and lacking in personality. Thinking about our hopes and dreams for the future kept leading us back to three little words that became the foundation on which our rebrand was laid: Bold. Simple. Us.
With the cobwebs clear from our brains, we turned towards a key aspect of research gathering: our competitors. No rebrand should be done in a vacuum, and doing an analysis of what others in your space are doing allows you to get a sense of best practices, commonalities, and gaps in the industry. We compiled countless brands and visual languages, digitally cataloging pages and snapshots in Figjam. Looking at our competitors allowed us to get a better understanding of the industry landscape, how we currently fit into it, and the space we envisioned ourselves filling in the future.
The final stage of our preliminary research is also my very favorite: scouring the depths of the web for inspiration. Inspiration can, and should, be found anywhere, and in this phase of the project I encourage looking high and low, left and right. If you’re only gathering inspiration for a design studio rebrand by looking at other design studio rebrands, you’re cutting yourself off from a whole world sparkling with ideas waiting to be harvested.
One of my favorite creative books, Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon, lifts the pressure of creating something from nowhere by assuring creatives that nothing, in fact, is original. “What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.” If everything is built on what came before, then the more inspiration that’s in your toolkit, the more tools with which to craft.
With our Figjam board bursting, toolkits full, and creative juices flowing, we were officially ready to try and answer the penultimate question…what the heck was this new brand going to look like? In our next thought piece, we’ll share an inside look into the exploration and creation of our new visual language.
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