Updating the 45royale Identity
Our company was formed back in March of 2005, and since that day, we’ve been on a constant mission to find a memorable mark that would become synonymous with the 45royale brand. Part of the beauty (and curse) of having an online business presence is that you have the ability to shape and brand your company on a daily basis. With services like Twitter and Facebook sprinting to the forefront of “always on” business communication, there is a ton of pressure on companies to solidify their branding to potential clients. This can be a daunting task for a business of any size, and all the more reason to settle upon a mark and start getting the word out.
In the past, we’ve tried a number of branding initiatives, with nothing really sticking around for more than a year or so. However, after setting a few goals for ourselves this year and moving in to a new office space, we’ve finally figured out what we we’ve been looking for in a brand and created something that we’re really happy with. So without further ado, we’d like to officially introduce you to the new 45royale identity.
New 45royale Identity
A long, but insightful road
It took a while to get there, but we are extremely happy with the result. We took several cues from our previous identity (seen below) including the shape and color palette, crafting something that we felt was just as bold and recognizable. We also added the first three characters of our name to the logo to create an instant association between the mark and our company.
Old vs. New
From vision to reality
Of course, one of the underlying reasons for our identity refresh was the move to the new office space. Before, we were both huddled up inside our home office caves with little to no interaction with the outside world. Now that we’re out among the living, it’s important that we have a brand that creates awareness in the community. Business cards and letterhead were first on the list and we teamed up with our friends at Doss Printing in Downtown Canton to get those printed and distributed. The cards ended up looking great and we were really happy with the results.
45royale business card — Front
45royale business card — Back
Now it’s your turn
So that’s a brief summary of the new 45royale logo mark and how it came to fruition. We hope after reading this article that we have inspired you to take ownership of your own brand. Whether it’s business or personal, branding and legacy on the web is more important now than ever. We’d love to hear your thoughts on our rebranding as well as what you’re doing right now to promote awareness of your own brand.
As Dennis pointed out, there isn’t much here in the article about the concept behind the brand’s look. I thought I’d take a minute to write about how it all came together.
As you can see in the image above, our old logo was also circular and extremely colorful. We thought it worked well enough at the time, and it even became fairly recognizable within the web community. However, it was created during a time when we didn’t necessarily think about how it would look, not only on the web, but everywhere else (letterhead, envelopes, business cards, billboards, etc.). We wanted something that would scale and age well, but still had some of the fun and colorful qualities of our previous mark.
We used the old mark’s shape and color as a starting point and begin exploring our options. After just a few revisions, we stumbled upon this idea that stuck from the get go. We both really liked it and thought it was powerful, containing both the visual interest and timeless quality we were looking for. It also incorporates elements from our word mark and we felt that was good on a number of levels, but most importantly helping to reinforce our brand recognition.
Probably the hardest decision to make was whether we were going to use 45 or 45R inside of the color circle. It was something we struggled with quite a bit with actually, but ultimately ended up sticking with the latter for a couple of reasons. One, 45R was visually much stronger than just the number 45. There was too much extra white space inside of the circle and it was screaming to be cut out. Secondly, there’s always been some confusion from over the spelling of our name, and for obvious reasons—it’s not an instantly recognizable word. Most people type our name as 45Royale, not 45royale, which for the longest time irked the hell out of this OCD designer. After a few years though, I came to terms with the fact that it was not the easiest company name to spell and I didn’t let it get to me as much. I think this is what enabled me to see the strength in the weight of the capital R and decided to embrace the type instead of fight it. In the end, the strength of the capital R was too much to overlook and we are extremely happy with the results.
I hope this insight helps to understand the process behind the new mark. It actually came together quickly, but there were still big decisions to make to steer the brand in the right direction. Again, thanks for reading and we hope you enjoyed the article. Please feel free to leave comments below, we’d love to hear your thoughts on this update as well as the mark in general. Thanks for your time!
The colors look great. Care to go into a little more into the concept of the new mark?
Thanks for the comment, Dennis! I will definitely gather my thoughts and give this post an update with a more in depth look in to the concept behind the logo as well as what it took to get from A to B with the mark.
Stay tuned, I’ll have something shortly!
Love it, man!
I’m a huge sucker for transparency effects in logos or anywhere, especially when a few colors are blending together to form other colors.
How are you planning to integrate it into the website header?
Thanks for the comment Mike, glad you like it!
As for integrating it in to the header, we’ve given it some thought and think we’re going to leave it out for a while. We have different ideas for the header as we move throughout the year, so we might make the adjustment then. For now, we’ve put it in the footer as a secondary mark to raise at least some sort of awareness.
We appreciate the feedback, please keep it coming!
Wow that is an absolutely amazing design. Veeery well done!
I really like the new logo but could you explain why you went with a capital ‘R’ for the logo and a small ‘r’ for the wordmark?
I absolutely love your new logo. The business cards are so simple, yet so powerful. Great job guys.
@Mark Lowe Good question, I’m surprised no one has brought that up yet. :) It was definitely something we went back and forth over for a while, ultimately making the decision to use the uppercase R for two reasons.
1. Visually, the character was much stronger uppercase than lowercase and the shape served as a nice bookend to the 4 at the beginning.
2. We’ve spent a few years fighting with people, trying to get them to spell our name right. There’s just no good way to explain it and most people spell our name with a capital R anyway. So we decided to embrace it and roll with the punches.
Nothing too profound, but we were happy with the decision.
@Will Thanks for the comment, we’re glad you like the new logo!
Thanks for the response Matt. Gotcha!
And thanks for the article, I’m in the process of coming up with branding for my new freelance business and content like this really helps.
I like the 45royale’s work very much, in many ways you guys are my long time inspiration. But don’t you think a logo should be independent in terms of color. Your old and new both logo needs to have the color to give the feel you want. It can’t express itself as shape?
I definitely like the subtle use of color in the simple shape of the mark. It reminds me of the popularity boom of color television. Something classic about it. Nice typeface too! ^_^