Collaborative Branding 01 - Context

Today we were given the task of re-branding a given company to effectively communicate the market, target audience and sector in a contemporary context. 

Our group was chosen to re-brand the company, Help-Link. They provide boiler installations, offer the best central heating systems suited for your home, maintenance and repair services and offer care plans to help maintain the customers investments affordable.

Before we started, some context was needed about Help-Link to help base our decisions on re-branding the company. They pride themselves on rising to the top in the world for home heating provision, offering high standards on both service and equipment, being an energy efficient thus cost effective choice, providing long term reliability and ensuring the customers peace of mind all while being socially responsible by holding fund raising events for the community. 

What we can draw from this is that Help-Link is a professional company that sets industry standards but yet still connects with its audience on a human level and gives back to the community. It is a company that has a two-way relationship with its customers and wants to be seen as a reliable and accessible source for central heating issues. 

But in order to re-brand, we looked into some of the problems Help-Link's logo had in conveying their company's image. What stood out the most for us was the name itself, Help-Link. Help-Link does not sound like a central heating or boiler company because of its lack of relation to any of those services. Help and Link may indicate that they are there to provide a service to you, or to help you in a dilemma, but if the company prides themselves so much on providing a top class heating service then a name change relating to that service was to be in place. We thought of utilising the 2 word format in order to combine a buzzword that relates to central heating and the aspect of helping the customer and community in another. Help-Link just sounded like a I.T. company to us. 

Another problem we saw was the typeface used on the company's brand:

• It was in consistent in casing, the H and E were capitals in Help but L and P were lower cased. 
• The typeface reminded me of actual I.T. companies namely Linksys, Asus largely due to the curvature of the stem in L, E and the tail of K. 
• The monotonous, dark colour palette of the 'Help-Link' did not reflect the active interaction with the customer. 

 Ideas of improvement we started thinking of before actually experimenting with typefaces:

• Colour changes made to the letter forms in order to reflect their engagement with the customer and community, being energy efficient and providing heating solutions. 
• Name changes that help see them as a heating company not I.T.
• A clean, timeless type design to keep in with their message of providing modern, top quality heating solutions.