Playground is a digital creative agency located in Canada. The company has been around for 4 years and is continuing to grow and expand. Playground helps their clients broaden the horizon in terms of creativity and innovation. The team at Playground is always looking to add a sense of exuberance to every project they work on and felt their branding should represent that. This year Playground decided to take on the task of rebranding.
PLAYGROUND LOGO CIRCA 2009
First they started with the logo. The original logo for playground used a simple sans serif font in a standard shade of grey. The "O" in "Playground" was purple and elevated above the rest of the other letters. Light grey dashes are placed over the "G" and "R" so the "O" is depicted as a ball bouncing. While the logo was very playful and clean the colors made branding very limiting. While purple interprets a slight whimsical vibe, it is a very finite color and Playground desired to do more. The name of the company conceptually ties into Playgrounds approach to everything. The logo needed to represent the dual meaning of work and play. After a great deal of time the creative minds at the company came up with a logo they were very pleased with. The new logo illustrates a deep purple hexagon with rounded edges. Inside the hexagon a white scripted "P" is placed. To the right of the hexagon is "playground inc." is presented as a sans serif type face in black. Many people felt the new logo was a bad combination of the "P" in Pintrest and the hexagon in Simplebits. Eventually Playground realized they needed to push further and find a new, fresh and timeless identity for them to take ownership of.
NEW PLAYGROUND LOGO
Playground was left with ambition and inspiration from the branding work of Paul Rand and Massimo Vignelli. They took it upon themselves to create a simple, but bold logo that was both geometric and timeless. Playground felt the hexagonal "P" was very geometric and clean while the color red makes the brand appear very approacable. The color red doesn't have as many limits as purple giving the brand a fresh and fast feel.
PLAYGROUND LOGO 2013
Rebrand sounds like a death sentence yet it can launch a company into many new ares and provide new opportunities. I think that rebranding can either help or hurt a company. This is illustrated with the development of Playground's logo. If you look at Playground's logo from 2009 and then the 2013 one there is a notable difference and feel between the two. More and more companies are rebranding themselves, trying to create a new image for the new age. If anyone should learn anything from rebranding it should be that simplicity is often the better option. Simplicity doesn't mean a boring corporate logo, but something that is fresh and modern.
