ACS Creative

99.9999% of internet users are familiar with the Google Logo; in fact, it's probably the most recognized logo on the web.

The notable thing about the Google logo is that Google is constantly changing it —but NOT changing it. Even when letters are omitted completely, colors are changed, or images are added, it's still the Google logo.

It begs the question: How far can you deviate from a visual concept while maintaining a solid brand identity? Google had the good judgement to represent itself with a colorful palette on a simple white backdrop, and refer to itself only by its simple six-letter name, making it flexible enough to work symbolic representations of current events and other visual messages into.

So when it was announced a few months ago that Affordable Creative Services was about to go through a metamorphosis, reemerging rebranded as "ACS Creative," we all got kinda excited. The Sterling office played the biggest role in the new brand development, but we all pitched in our ideas and concepts for the new ACS Creative, Inc. company logo.

This is the one we've been using for a long time:

Eventually, after months of comps, and revisions, and more comps, and more revisions, Russell, our President and founder, made the selection of our new logo: 

I think our previous logo had two powerful elements to it; one was the red swoosh. The other was the word "Affordable" on top, which appealed to small businesses and thrifty clients. I'd say the Creative part was important too, but if people were searching for a graphic design or marketing firm, they probably already understood that message.

During the new logo creation process I was strongly in favor of keeping the red swoosh intact for brand recognition. However, after taking the new logo in for a while I realized that the floating red glyph could be viewed as a different opportunity— could it be a sign that we should test out the Google deviation theory on our own brand? By itself, a triangular shape doesn't relate to our previous branding, and emphasis on the "A" character isn't completely necessary since the 'Affordable' part has been absorbed by the initials A-C-S. What it does have is the potential be a clean slate for our new brand to develop, and a way to showcase the "Creative" part of the acronym...

So a group of designers here did some focus testing on a recent afternoon. We tasked ourselves with quickly creating images out of the glyph. Granted we weren't wholly concentrating on relating the visuals to the brand at first. Sometimes it's necessary to take a thing to its limit before scaling it back. Not to mention it was really fun and we liked doing it.

And as Google has taught us, sometimes it's more important to show than tell when designing a brand identity.