Should we update brand typography and/or logo before web redesign?

Question

We're expecting our website to be redesigned by Feb '22.

Alongside web refresh we're updating our photography, colour palette (minimal change), logo and fonts.

Currently we're using different typography across email, social and the website. New style guide only includes one font which is not present in any of our current designs.

The question is - do we wait until February to start using the new assets? I'm a bit concerned that until that time there will be many visuals posted on social with various fonts.

My idea was to update everything together with the website to create a WOW effect on our customers and ensure our competitors are not expecting such changes.

Not sure if that's the best approach?

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EDIT

Thank you for your answers!

Just a bit of background about the business: we're a British manufacturing company with 2 ecommerce websites in home & garden vertical. We're one of the market leaders and a supplier to a vast majority of our competitors. Online revenue is £1.2M per website. There's only myself in the marketing department at the moment, we work mainly with freelancers and agencies. There's a plan to hire 2 juniors to join my team before the February launch. They would be mainly producing content for social, email and website. Right now we don't have much printed material for the brand I'm asking about. We do everything online and it shouldn't take us longer than a week to update our online presence with new colour palette and logos.

Answer 1

A great deal of this has to do with the staff available, breadth of change, and planning. Basically, not every brand can be updated the same way. It depends on what you are updating beyond merely a web site.

If you can set a date... and from that date forward all materials are to use the new brand, that works best. Until that date, continue to use current branding.

It takes considerable planning to have everything ready by a specific date - web site, advertising, in-house materials (invoices, business card, letterhead, etc). Not to mention, if needed, signage, packaging, etc. Not all business have the staff to do this. A small staff may mean it could take weeks or months to get everything updated.

You can order printed materials and merely have them on hand for the date. You can redesign any online images (Facebook, etc) and have them ready for replacement on a specific date. Simply because a web site is ready does not necessarily mean it has to be launched as soon as it's available. You can plan on a launch date to coincide with all the other materials. Again, having the available staff to implement all the changes at once is a consideration.

Inevitably, there's going to be some overlap between the old and new brand somewhere. So if necessary, focus on one area... update all online materials on a specific date, then get the offline (printed) materials done as soon as possible. Or vice versa.

Unless you are multi-million dollar corporation, new brand rollouts typically take a few weeks or more. There's really no harm in staggering a few items when necessary. Focus on what the customers see first, or what takes the longest to update, then work your way back from there.

• If my customer acquisition is 80%+ online... the order of an update for me would be web site, online advertising, offline (print) materials. Limiting the time between the new site launch and online advertising updates as much as possible.

• If my customer acquisition is 80%+ offline (mail/print)... the order of an update for me would be print pieces to include any print advertising, then web site, online advertising.

• If my business included shipping, packaging, labels, etc. Then my order would be all packaging, labels, and anything associated with that. Then print collaterals (invoices, packing slips, print advertising, etc). Then the website and online advertising.

You want customers to retain a sense of familiarity if they've seen an advertisement and landed on your web site. Without knowing what your customers see first, it's difficult to give a specific breakdown of any schedule.

Because email advertising is typically tee fastest to create, I'd save those for the last step of any online advertising. After the new web site has been launched.

Answer 2

It depends on many factors.

In most cases it is best to consider all brand assets in a redesign. 'Updating a logo' is often a query by clients, but what they actually want/need is a complete brand redesign. If you give the web designers a design that is set to be updated, that would lead to the website needing an update soon after the re-branding. Leading to additional costs and likly a bit of a compromise between what already has been done and what would be best for the new branding.

That said, if the changes are minimal. Like for big brands that wont want to change to much as not to hurt brand recognition for example it may not be that big of an issue. As it sounds like your branding is a bit all over the place currently that is probably not the case here.

I would recommend having a meeting with the brand designer to discuss how to best handle this. He may be able to advice how to best move forward. He may even be able to draw up some design directions and give you a brand guideline that can be used for the time before the rebranding is finished.

(...) and ensure our competitors are not expecting such changes

I very much doubt that this would have any negative impact on your business. Maybe if you are market leader in a segment that is comprised of only a few big companies and you constantly have to update your branding to stay ahead of your competitors that are copying you. But that clearly is not the case here...