Naylor Building Partnerships has been a leader in the commercial building maintenance industry for more than 4 decades, and during that time their original logo remained unchanged. Over time, however, without up-to-date brand guidelines, the use of the logo became highly inconsistent across divisions and locations, leading to a brand image that didn’t properly convey the high quality and consistency of service that Naylor delivers to their corporate clients.
At the time, Naylor was also preparing for future growth and potential acquisition, which made brand consistency and market perception especially important. A clear, unified visual identity would help strengthen credibility not only with customers but also with potential investors and partners.
Naylor engaged Christopher Pressey Design to review their brand and provide recommendations. Through conversations, it was revealed that there were mixed feelings internally about the original logo: some felt it was dated, others felt it conveyed the company’s rich and long-standing history. Both sides were actually correct. We quickly determined together that a new logo, while certainly an option, could cause more problems than it would solve – most notably a significant and otherwise avoidable expense of rebranding a fleet of more than 300 service vehicles while at the same time negatively impacting the brand’s 40+ years of recognition.
Instead, we moved ahead with a complete Brand Refresh which included redesigning existing documents, bringing in an updated corporate font and expanded colour palette, and designing a completely new system of tools including guidelines, documents, layouts and other resources that allow Naylor’s internal marketing and communications teams to create additional documents in the future that are consistently on-brand and uniquely Naylor.
Numerous documents were re-envisioned for consistency, ease of presentation, and consistent brand positioning. An icon version of the original Naylor logo was created to further extend branding options, a flexible grid system was developed to aid in layout positioning across multiple document formats, and an updated colour palette was introduced across the entire brand.
The Brand Guidelines Document created for Naylor contains more than 30 pages outlining proper use of the logo and icon elements, brand colours, and fonts; as well as specifications and instructions for creating existing and new versions of the various document formats needed for Naylor’s marketing and business communications. Below are a few examples.
Related Case Study This project continued into a new chapter following acquisition and beyond. Naylor’s Next Chapter: How a Flexible Brand Evolved Through Acquisition and Beyond
