What fundamentally distinguishes rebranding from brand creation is its relationship to its origins. A good rebrand doesn’t deny the past – it reassembles. Alongside strategy, executional excellence and fitness for purpose, I recommend a fourth evaluation lens: faithful originality. How has the new visual narrative extended the brand’s founding idea?

Take Google’s recent rebrand – the first update in 10 years. I couldn’t have imagined Google becoming a “heritage brand” when I first tried out search in the early 2000s, but here we are, 25 years later. The new logo remains instantly, recognisably, Google but the move away from a blocky, flat identity helps keep the now venerable tech brand fresh.

What would have been the value of a complete overhaul when all they needed to do was spruce up the ‘G’? A tweak – one that I’m sure was accompanied by an extensive brand architecture review – that has hopefully set Google up for another 10 years.

Google isn’t the only tech giant that’s been updating lately – we’ve seen fresh looks from OpenAI, Mozilla, and Amazon in the past year. Like so many startups, these companies grew up without really thinking of themselves as brands. They were projects, products, platforms.

Over time, they have inevitably structured themselves, organising and presenting themselves with a voice, a posture, an aesthetic. These rebrands are not a mere graphic update. It’s a foundational act, communicating maturity. Here, design becomes a tool of strategic clarification, storytelling, a language in service of an identity under construction.

At Lonsdale, we worked with French e-commerce scale up Prestashop on a rebrand that did require something different. Entering a period of rapid expansion meant taking on global giants like Shopify, so in this case standing out was important. We still tried to keep it simple by using the power of typography to communicate the brand’s diverse range of customers and almost limitless customisation tools.

Rebranding as a balancing act

Transformation without amnesia, disruption without disconnection – rebranding is like walking a tightrope. It demands a clear vision, rigorous execution, and deep contextual intelligence. The flashy, “all change” rebrands might catch our eye first and many of us will be guilty of celebrating the bold brand transformations, while overlooking the intent that lies behind a more subtle refresh.

But in a world hungry for meaning, a truly successful evolution can lie in articulating a simple, strong, coherent idea – one that remains profoundly faithful to what made the brand unique. The ones that didn’t change everything. Nor nothing. But simply made the same story resonate more clearly.