The devil is in the details

I’m often intrigued by the redesigns of large brands done by big agencies that end up being little more than tweaks. ITT Corporation‘s rebranding by Landor in 2007 comes to mind. It ended up boiling down to the change of a single Pantone® number and expanding the kerning of the letters in the logo. More recently there’s the rebranding of Pfizer by Siegal+Gale, which is nothing more than a typeface change, tilt of the oval and introduction of a gradient.

The most striking part of these types of rebranding, and these two examples, is how significant of an improvement these small changes make. They’re sometimes scoffed at and criticized with arguments similar to the “my six-year-old could’ve painted that” barbs that are often hurled in the direction of work by artists like Jackson Pollock. But to an objective eye, they’re perfect examples of just how important every little detail is.