Introducing the new SSW logo

Logos are more important than we realise – a logo is often your first impression of a company and as such having a good one will go a long way to being memorable and instilling a sense of trust and familiarity. Our designers should be commended. We followed the same logo design process we do with clients where we had a brief, we did sketches, several iterations and then a presentation to a small focus group.

Making changes to our much loved SSW logo has been a lengthy design consideration. SSW has been represented and branded by the popular ‘swoosh’ logo for nearly 20 years, but it was time for our logo to evolve alongside our growing company.

We could have started afresh, but we chose to keep the original company colors and the core feel. Therefore the swoosh was kept, as this has become the iconic symbol of SSW. We introduced a set of 4 small squares to the design, each in a varying shade of our corporate colors. The squares also highlight that we mainly work with the Microsoft stack.

I am proud to unveil the new SSW logo and believe this modern look will carry us further into the future.

You can download a copy of the logo from our logo page.

History

In 2012 we launched a new SSW website with the influence of Windows 8 and Metro tiles. Our nearly 20 year old logo started to look dated.

Then we began a serious effort to reinvent our branding for this new age of digital media.

2014 New Logo

On the SSW new logo, you may just recognize several elements inspired from our original logo – the web, the globe and the “swoosh”, as Adam Cogan loves to call it. Our goal was to retain the elements that made our company recognizable, but freshen it up with a Metro touch.

We kept the “swoosh” but replaced the globe and the web with the four squares as homage to our proud Microsoft affiliation.

Of course we tightened the overall alignment and straightened the font – now using Helvetica Neue LT Pro 95.

We hope you like it!

Remember, the logo is a valuable corporate asset that must be used consistently in the proper, approved forms. We’ve also outlined some ways we don’t want our logo to be used. You can find these rules on our logo page.

The logo is more complicated than we have usually produced for clients, but at least it’s simpler than our previous one! 🙂

What do you think?

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Update: Another excellent Roger Martin video discussing why we should avoid constantly updating our distinctive packaging or brand to remain relevant. And how our habitual brain fights back against this change: