It’s not a change of who we are, it’s a better reflection.
Many companies rebrand or redesign because they want to show off a new face to their partners, customers, or potential investors. For many it’s about trying to portray a different version of themselves that they want you to see.
We didn’t want to portray a different version of ourselves. We wanted to dig deeper and portray who we are — who we’ve always been — more clearly.
Over the years since the current version of our logo was introduced in the late 1980s, multiple versions of our brandmark have organically developed. And one change outside of our control in 2001 threw us for a bit of a loop: the creation of the Transportation Security Administration.
We don’t do airport checkpoints.
Since 2001, we have worked to distinguish our company from the governmental agency that we meet every time we fly. For those who have an ongoing relationship with us, this is quite a simple thing to do and we set ourselves apart by our trustworthiness and deep personal relationships.
But for those who are just finding out about us, the fact that we both commonly go by the three letter acronym TSA has been confusing. The brandmark we have been using since the late 1980s has a mid century modern look to it and the slant of that logo subtly communicated movement and perhaps even transportation. This increased the similarity.
Today we’re taking steps to distance ourselves from transportation security and reemphasize the company that our long term customers know and love.
We’re the same company. We just look different.
To make sure that we had an accurate vision of ourselves, we conducted a number of interviews internally and with our customers and partners to make sure that who we believe we are aligns with what our customers know to be true about us.
We distilled these conversations down and found that our customers believe that we are trustworthy and knowledgeable and that our support for our customers and their initiatives goes far beyond what they receive from other vendors. In fact, many listed this support as our greatest strength.
Of course, we were excited to confirm this alignment, and we immediately set about transforming these ideals into a visual representation of who we are. After testing many different silhouettes and color schemes, we finally settled on this:
We love the new look, and love even more that it represents the heart of who we are as a company. Here are a few of the features that we think should stand out:
- We wanted to respect the history of the company, so we use a variant of the red color as a familiar call back to the previous logo.
- To further separate ourselves from the government agency, we’ve used a friendly and approachable lower-case font.
- At the tail end of the ‘S’ we’ve included a subtle arrow to signal movement and the forward progress that we’ll make together.
We’re closer to our partners than ever.
Finally, one of our favorite features of the new brandmark is an adaptability that enables us to clearly portray the closeness and depth of understanding that we share with our partners.
As you can see below, the brandmark can be adjusted to take on some of the characteristics of our partners’ logos while still maintaining our unique identity. The dynamic arrow points to our partners and reflects their colors, emphasizing our expertise and deep collaboration.
It’s a small but important feature that further portrays the flexibility and ingenuity that we’ll bring to every project we engage in.
What does this all mean for you?
As we said before, we made this visual change so that the way we look would better reflect the company that you’ve come to know.
A lot of love and hard work went in to designing this new brand identity, and we’re excited to finally share it with you. We hope it communicates our continued commitment to the pursuit of excellence and makes it just a little easier to see the real TSA.