08.04.2022

Rebrand­ing of a lead­ing com­pany in the field of lo­gist­ics solu­tions

Design stu­dio Stu­dio Mast has car­ried out a ma­jor rebrand­ing for Kobo, an Afric­an lead­er in in­nov­a­tion in in­teg­rated lo­gist­ics solu­tions and truck broker­age. Kobo in­teg­rates end-to-end trans­port op­er­a­tions to help cargo own­ers, trans­port own­ers, drivers and cargo re­cip­i­ents cre­ate an ef­fi­cient sup­ply chain struc­ture.

With con­veni­ent, easy-to-use mo­bile and web ap­plic­a­tions, Kobo re­duces the risk of sup­ply chain dis­rup­tion, lo­gist­ics bot­tle­necks and pro­duc­tion costs. They achieve this by giv­ing their drivers a real-time view of the traffic situ­ation and cre­at­ing an ef­fi­cient value chain for all stake­hold­ers in the sup­ply chain.

Hav­ing be­come more fam­ous in the field of tech­no­lo­gic­al solu­tions, Kobo de­cided to in­vest in the de­vel­op­ment of its brand. The pre­vi­ous iden­tity did not provide for a unique sym­bol (trade­mark), there was only a font logo, this cir­cum­stance was the main reas­on for the rebrand­ing.

The name of the com­pany comes from the Ni­geri­an kobo coin. There­fore, Stu­dio Mast brand­ing agency cre­ated a sym­bol in­spired by this story and the round shape of the coin, as well as try­ing to con­vey the move­ment and glob­al de­vel­op­ment of the cli­ent's busi­ness. The in­tro­duc­tion of the sym­bol (brand name) im­me­di­ately helped to in­crease the value of the brand and its re­cog­ni­tion in the glob­al mar­ket. In or­der for the sym­bol to have a sense of uni­form and con­tinu­ous move­ment, the de­sign­ers built the sign on a grid with the same rig­or that is used in road design.

When cre­at­ing a new logo style, the de­sign­ers pro­ceeded from the graph­ics of the pre­vi­ous one in or­der to pre­serve a cer­tain brand equity. In the pre­vi­ous font logo, the plastic let­ters “K” did not cor­res­pond to the nature of the com­pany’s activ­it­ies, there­fore, dur­ing the rebrand­ing, the draw­ing and plastic of the let­ters “K” and “B” began to con­tain visu­al ref­er­ences to the char­ac­ter­ist­ic junc­tion of roads and over­passes. In ad­di­tion to not be­ing con­sist­ent with the brand's glob­al reach, the pre­vi­ous typeface logo had is­sues with legib­il­ity, re­pro­du­cib­il­ity, and scal­ing. Stu­dio Mast cre­ated a bold up­dated logo, keep­ing some con­tinu­ity with the old one, but at the same time solv­ing the prob­lems out­lined above.

In the pro­cess of de­vel­op­ing a new iden­tity, the brand's col­or palette was up­dated and ex­pan­ded, a sys­tem for us­ing col­ors and their com­bin­a­tions was cre­ated.

Pre­vi­ously, "Kobo" had a fam­ily of sub-brands that did not match the iden­tity of the main brand. When work­ing on the rebrand­ing, the task was also to unite all sub-brands, thanks to which the par­ent brand “Kobo” be­came stronger, more fam­ous and re­cog­niz­able, as a styl­ist­ic­ally uni­fied set of sub-brands was formed.

Stu­dio Mast has de­veloped a Kobo brand sys­tem solu­tion that uses a com­bin­a­tion of grids and mod­u­lar blocks in­spired by stacked ship­ping con­tain­ers to cre­ate a sense of lo­gic and or­der. These prin­ciples ap­ply in the di­git­al and phys­ic­al space of brand pres­ence. The act­ive use of the new sym­bol and circles im­me­di­ately in­creases the value of the Kobo brand and its re­cog­ni­tion.

Aside from the trucks them­selves, the second most vis­ible part of the brand's new iden­tity are bill­boards and signs to help at­tract drivers to join Kobo or help them find their way. The design of the bill­boards is con­trast­ing, con­cise and ex­press­ive, con­tains con­cise, clear mes­sages, which helps the brand com­mu­nic­ate ef­fect­ively with the audi­ence.

Read more on the website:
studiomast.co