Everything you need to know about our brand refresh

Do you remember what you looked like a decade ago? 

(Don’t worry, we all have those pictures we wish we could scrub from the internet. Just take a peek at the snapshot below from the archives of our old website.)

Brands, like people, are constantly evolving and their outsides often change to reflect that inner growth.

We’ve grown so much since our days as the first employee knowledge platform in 2011 to become the frontline enablement tool we are today. Now, we provide critical support and resources to over 3.5 million employees in 160+ countries—and we wanted a new look that reflected who we are and who we’re going to be.

Importantly, we’re still rooted in learning. That’s the heart of what Axonify does. But now with new features, capabilities and outcomes, we’re seizing the opportunity to even better support our customers and the frontline.

To offer some insight into how we arrived at our new look and what goes into a brand refresh, we chatted with The Starr Conspiracy’s Bailey Blanchone, the Creative Director who guided, advised and collaborated on creating the visual identity we’re debuting. 

How do you help a brand that’s decided it’s the right time for a visual refresh and how much, or little, to change?

Bailey Blanchone:  For Axonify, it was really important to our collaborative team to retain the reputation, credibility and originality the company has built for over the last decade in this space. 

We wanted the changes to say: ‘Hey, we’re bigger and bolder but we’re still Axonify. We still believe in all the things that we’ve always believed in. We’re still solving problems for the types of people that we’ve always been solving problems for. Now we’re just able to do it in more ways that maybe weren’t there before.’

What kinds of research did you do when you approached Axonify’s brand refresh and what did you discover?

When we did our [brand] analysis, Axonify’s unique shapes instantly jumped out to us as something worth keeping, not only from a brand strategy and recognition standpoint but also to internally and externally still feel like Axonify. I call it the ‘bigger, better, bolder’ version because the license to be bold is something that we talked about a lot and Axonify is the credible leader in the space. The same kind of in-depth research went into color decisions. Green was a differentiating color when we looked at who else is at the table and how we could potentially set the brand apart.

The overarching goal of these visual identity updates was to make Axonify’s new brand robust, accessible and ready to scale without limits. That’s where our new visual focus on motion, connection and energy comes into play. 

I felt like that was the biggest challenge: How do we build a cool, fluid language beyond basic shapes? And so the squiggle was born! They look like you need to stretch and use your whole arm to make them and that energy really, finally comes through.

How do you measure the success of a brand refresh?

As Creative Director, one of the things that’s really important to me, especially in client services, is the internal reaction. Our stakeholder group can only be so big and there are people that have to use the new messaging and branding every day that might not have been part of the brand refresh process. ​​Internal buy-in can be make-or-break for a successful rebrand because you’re changing something that takes discipline to implement over a long period of time—it takes about 12 to 18 months to really feel the like business impact of a rebrand. But you’re in a good spot if you can still get them excited about it.

In this case, success for me looks like the new brand capturing the essence of the Axonify team and everyone understanding that the collaborative decisions are very intentional and company-specific.

We’re excited to re-introduce Axonify: how the frontline learns, connects and gets things done!

Maliyah Bernard

Maliyah Bernard is an academic writer turned copywriter. As a former frontline worker, she loves writing about all the ways organizations can support these essential workers smarter.

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