At the turn of the millennium, digital life was ramping up, and, as the decade progressed, the internet evolved through entertainment and social media, and the world got closer as 3G and smartphones changed the way we connected and consumed forever.
With the climate crisis and recession looming, some brands revamped their image, leant into new tech and sought celebrity endorsements, while others looked to their heritage to gain renewed strength.
Here (in no particular order), are the best rebrands of the decade, as chosen by designers and industry experts. For more from the noughties, see our best logos of the 2000s and best adverts of the 2000s pieces.
01. O2
“One of the standout moments in the mobile network race of the early noughties was when O2 emerged. Repositioning and refreshing the ageing BTCellnet brand and re-emerging with a strong, modern and uniquely ownable brand name and identity to match,” says Chris Newell, creative partner at creative agency syn.. The telecoms service provider launched on 02/02/02, and followed with several highly effective brand extensions sponsoring Arsenal football club and taking over London’s Millennium Dome in 2007 to create a music venue, among other projects.
My first venture into mobile phone providers at the end of the 1990s was with Orange, the one brand out of all of them that captured my attention and I resonated with,” Chris continues. “I was a loyal customer for quite a few years until the O2 brand launched with the ‘see what you can do’ campaign and I switched not long after. As the years went on the brand just got stronger and flexed into new spaces. Repurposing the Millennium Dome into The O2 flagship events venue, then driving loyalty with O2 rewards and O2 Priority. The powerful yet simple name and identity made brand extension very easy and uniquely ownable.”
02. Uniqlo
Around since the mid-80s, Uniqlo – short for ‘unique clothing’ – saw growth across Japan in the '90s and, despite a few early hiccups, rolled out into Europe and the US throughout the 2000s. With a lull in sales, it began rebranding efforts 2005/2006, led by creative director Kashiwa Sato. Alongside using a new logo in a brighter, more vivid red, for a stronger identity, stores were redesigned, and the brand was repositioned as offering clothes that could fulfil basic needs at a high quality, rather than riding trends. The new logo was cleverly applied throughout the communication strategy prior to stores reopening, including being printed on the buildings' “under-construction” panels, alongside yellow cab roofs, and various media, to encourage awareness.
"The current Uniqlo logo embraces the brand’s Japanese heritage on an international stage,” says Abigail Baldwin, creative director at graphic design and illustration agency Buttercrumble. “Their primary red colour was adjusted to match the Japanese flag and a second logo was added in Katakana which is used specifically for foreign words and brand names. It embodies Japanese pop culture, which the Western world is fascinated by.”
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03. Apple
“The 2000s were a major turning point for Apple’s branding aesthetic,” says Nazy Farkhondeh, senior writer at verbal branding agency Reed Words. “It’s when they transitioned from the serif Apple Garamond to the sans-serif Myriad Apple. This took place in concert with the move away from the copy-heavy, wry-humour ads of the 80s and 90s, to bright, minimal ads with a single, commanding copy idea that still characterises their ads today. Jobs’s anticipated return in 1997 planted big seeds for Apple’s transition from a tech to a lifestyle brand.”
“The product line was highly simplified and improved. And so was Apple’s advertising,” she continues. "Their new brand philosophy of putting beauty, simplicity, and intuition into the foreground of everything they do was the thinking that made the G3 iMacs and iBook so successful. It marked the shift from Apple’s notoriety for beige box hardware into its era of bright and colourful aspiration.
"When we look at the progression of Apple’s marketing, it’s clear the switch from product-focused to aspiration-led gave Apple the cultural licence to launch the iconic silhouette iPod ads in the early 00s. Outside of the iPod logo at the very end, the absence of words gives the audio tracks room to do their emotive magic – from Jet’s gritty, propulsive, and titillating lyrical flood in ‘Are You Gonna Be My Girl’ to Caesar’s quirky, upbeat, and groovy ‘Jerk It Out’. I’m a verbal person – which is why I’m even more struck by how viscerally these ads activate the sensory ‘feels’ only experienced when plugging into a good song and completely letting go."
However, what was most notable about the iPod, Nazy believes, was that it helped lead to Apple’s eventual mass success in creating something new. “It was their first device that wasn’t a productivity or work tool. It was all about the emotion and energy they brought to their consumers’ lives. The iPod’s success is a testament to how powerful a new brand strategy can be. It’s the brand designer’s ultimate dream to ascribe quantitative success metrics to a rebrand. And so far, no one has hit it out of the park quite like Apple,” she says, adding that Apple’s share price over the past three decades saw an uplift around the time Apple made big swings with its brand. “‘Think Different’ opened the door to the iMac, which opened the door to the iPod, and then to the iPhone – which changed the world forever. This simple tagline sparked the revitalisation of Apple as a brand every brand aspired to be.”
04. Casa da Música
“The rebrand of Casa da Música is a really interesting case of a generative logo,” says Hua Chen, senior designer at brand strategy and design studio Team, of the 2007 rebrand by Stefan Sagmeister for the Rem Kohlhaas-designed music centre in the harbour town of Porto in Portugal. “The use of creative tech in generating logoforms and colours is fairly restrained and all the forms were inspired by the architectural context of the concert hall.
Creating an independent generator continues to be a compelling way to make brand stewardship easier,” Hua adds. “We see this form of generative form-making utilising a few base rules to create a set of related iconography with brand identities like MIT Media Lab and the Whitney Museum.”
05. Pantone
Pantone – known as a global authority in colour comms and inspo – made some great moves in branding throughout the decade, from its first “Color of the Year” being selected back in 2000, to creating its first trademarked colour in 2001, the ‘medium robin egg blue’ for Tiffany and Co.. For Ian Paget, graphic designer and founder of design firm and blog Logo Geek, the company’s 2006 rebrand was a standout move that has stood the test of time.
At the start of the 2000s, the Pantone logo featured a wordmark along with a symbol of swatches that fanned open. Then in 2006, the company transitioned to a new logo, still in use today, which utilised the idea of a window, with the wordmark positioned at the lower section of this,” he says. The simplified design was created by G2, the branding arm of Grey Global Group (now known as Grey), and came with the new tagline ‘The colour of ideas’.
“Although at the time the change felt fairly generic, utilising an idea seen before, upon reflection, making colour the primary focus was a good decision that has aged well,” adds Ian. “I often see Pantone-branded products with a different Pantone filling the window, and as a designer, it's hard not to be drawn to them.”
05. Accenture
Allen Adamson, co-founder and managing partner of marketing agency Metaforce and author of Seeing The How, picked the rebrand of global accountancy firm Arthur Andersen, as one of his top for the decade, after it underwent a significant overhaul in 2001, including a new name.
“The rebranding was strategic, aiming to separate the consulting business from Arthur Andersen's tarnished reputation. The combination of a new Accenture name grounded in the heritage of Arthur Anderson Consulting, which was often referred to as AC, and the simple, elegant greater-than-sign logo signalled that, unlike other consulting firms that merely provided advice, Accenture would provide impact and technology. The bold rebrand has driven dramatic business growth for more than 20 years. The strongest rebrands are typically built from a simple idea that captures the core benefit the business is trying to communicate, a customer ‘insight’. Accenture nailed the sweet spot leveraging the insight: 'When a company hires a consulting firm, it wants its business to be more successful (>greater) than it was before.”'
The initial ad campaign featured Tiger Woods, who was seeing continued success in his golfing career at the time. "This further expanded on the core graphic identity and added the notion of ‘winning’, which is the emotional end benefit of a growing business and reason to hire a consulting firm," Allen adds. "A strong name, linked to heritage, simple yet incredibly relevant logo, focused brand line ‘Innovation Delivered’ and breakthrough advertising nailed every component of the rebranding playbook to set them up for phenomenal success."
06. MyFonts
“One of my all-time favourite logos is the MyFonts logo, designed in 2009 by Underware in the Netherlands. The company's prior logo was somewhat generic and a bit of a mishmash of styles, so the redesign was a much-needed change,” says Ian. Designing a new logo for a company that represents thousands of fonts called for a custom typeface as part of the wordmark, with a clever hidden element acting as a symbol for the craft of creating lettering.
“At first glance, you'll simply see a nicely designed piece of custom lettering, which is exactly how I've seen this logo for years. Then one day, I discovered that the 'My' is actually a hand, reaching out to grab the fonts. It's so clever yet so subtle that once you notice it, you'll immediately fall in love with the logo too.”
07. BP
BP, formerly known as British Petroleum, underwent a dramatic rebranding effort in 2000, as a result of the merger between British Petroleum, Amoco, Arco and Castrol. This came at a time when there was increasing societal pressure to address climate change and reduce emissions.
“This set up the opportunity to dramatically break from all oil and gas competitors who all branded the same way – a sea of similarity,” says Allen. “ To solve the naming challenge of four companies merging, BP was selected as the new name. British Petroleum was the largest of the merging companies and had the most global recognition, and importantly, most people already referred to British Petroleum as BP. Dropping the petroleum name gave them permission to tell a new and bigger story.”
“A sun logo signalling green energy – while keeping with BP's existing brand colours of green and yellow – was a breakthrough in the oil and gas category,” Allen continues. “The use of the iconic logo as a super graphic boldly aligned with consumer desires for a green, clean energy company. The rebranding demonstrated the power of design and identity to change a company's perceptions and market positioning drastically. Had the company changed its actual business as effectively as it changed its image and brand promise, it would have been one of the most successful rebranding programs ever. Despite the Deepwater Horizon disaster, the company still stands out in the category and is likely seen as a better company than British Petroleum ever was.”
08. Wegmans
“The 2000’s were a weird time for branding,” says Lisa Franck, strategy director at design and advertising agency Tavern. “Tropicana became a cautionary tale after sales plummeted when their redesign made them unrecognisable. Pepsi’s new logo came with an unhinged analysis of the (pseudo)science behind the revised globe icon. BP attempted to put a bandaid on its negative public image with a bright and positive new sunburst logo. Most brands in the new millennium were focused on the future, throwing out their hard-earned equities in favour of shiny new ‘modern’ brand identities.”
As a looming recession sparked a series of rebrands, Wegmans was one of the few who tapped into the value of their hard-earned heritage to help them weather the financial downturn,” Lisa continues. Born in 1916, American supermarket chain Wegmans was a household name among shoppers, and leant into this almost 100-year-old heritage by returning to a warm, nostalgia-driven version of a logo from decades earlier.
“The brand recognised that they didn't need to chase trends to win brand love, they needed to cultivate the love they already had. In 2008, Wegmans revived, but re-imagined, their 1930’s logo. Stripping out the fluff, they modernised the wordmark but retained the heritage script for a contemporary take on the classic brand. The new brand carried Wegmans through the recession and beyond as they gained a cult following and expanded into several new states. The 2008 brand still stands today, a testament to the timelessness of the modern heritage design.”
09. The Olympics
Although not technically a full rebrand, this next entry was a localisation project by brand consultancy Wolff Olins, for the Olympics that came five years ahead of London 2012. The creators called the design “bold, spirited and dissonant, reflecting London’s modern, urban edge”, although it divided opinion once launched.
“This is a controversial one that divided opinion, launched 48,000 petitions and is still very much like Marmite today – still getting labelled as rubbish design by some,” Chris says. “The progressive brand mark and disruptive design system was a brave take on the traditional global sporting events’ visual style. As time went on it got embraced and was later perceived as a ground-breaking movement in brand design. It was a refreshing take on the typical perpendicular design system that certainly kept creatives on their toes and brand communications progressive. The logo itself never really felt comfortable as a mark, but that was probably the whole point.”
Chris’ colleague and syn. creative artwork lead, Ken Yarwood, agrees it was a bold move for the Olympics to embrace such a fresh take on a rebrand: “The 2012 Olympic logo was a departure from the traditional style seen in Olympic branding over the past two decades, presenting a fresh and interesting design. However, it garnered vocal criticism from detractors who found it lacking in inspiration and creativity. Whilst it was intriguing to work with and adapt to, from a production standpoint it presented unique challenges with extensive and precise brand guidelines that had a lot of variation in rules. Managing the approval process was akin to what I imagine navigating an Olympic village is, with multiple stakeholders needing to sign off on every detail, it highlighted the complexities involved in working with such a protected brand.
For more on branding, see our best logos of the decade series.
