Reed Holland has a long and successful history, going back 35 years when the company was first founded. This is something we are very proud of, but as Reed Holland has grown and evolved, our image – fronted by our original wordy logo – no longer represented our dynamic and innovative studio. What’s more, it was becoming apparent that the ‘+’ symbol between the names of our two founders was causing confusion. It had been intended for visual interest to echo the graphic device used on architectural drawings and symbolise positive connectivity with our clients and working partners. However, we were sometimes being referred to as ‘Reed AND Holland’ or ‘Reed PLUS Holland’, when, in fact, we want to be known simply as ‘Reed Holland’.
In the advent of social media, the original icon (or favicon) was designed, using the red, white and grey palette as well as the ‘+’ graphic, and featuring a building block design:
While fun and eye-catching, we felt it was time for a bit of an overhaul, and in order to create better cohesion between the full logo and the favicon, it was important to redesign them together. The departure of both company founders, John Reed and Richard Holland, who retired simultaneously, got us thinking about our new identity and where we wanted to go from here. Rebranding felt like an important part of that process. We were sad to see John and Richard go, but felt it was important to show people that we were still here, still active, and – thanks to the legacy they’d left us – still have a vibrant future ahead of us.
So, earlier this year we began playing around with some ideas. First of all, we were clear that we needed to portray our identity more succinctly. This meant stripping the full logo back to our name only: Reed Holland. We dropped the (rather stuffy-sounding!) ‘Associates’, which after all was never included on our full logo.
We then set our creative energies to work: we tried losing the ‘+’ graphic, repositioning it, experimenting with architectural lines and exploring a whole host of graphic styles.
The result is this dynamic logo that uses a bespoke architectural font without coming across too harsh or staid, embodying a professional yet creative practice:
The ‘+’ graphic has been moved and demoted in terms of its weighting in the logo, thereby eliminating ambiguity but retaining the message that we originally wanted to convey.
For social media sites, where favicons tend to be small and difficult to read, we have gone with the stripped back logo below, featuring the ‘+’ graphic alone and inverting the colours so that the punchy pink of our new palette is prominent and effective on this platform.
We are very enthusiastic about our new image and are proudly displaying it here on our brand new website, plus wherever else we can!