If you visit the Emergent Software website today, you may notice that things look a little different. Our company has grown and evolved since we launched in 2015 and we decided it was time to refresh our brand in a way that better represents the business we are today. 

Why we chose to refresh our brand

There are a number of reasons we felt that it was time for a new look. The services we offer to our customers have changed in recent years and so have styles and trends.

Expanded services

Emergent Software began as a software development company, and our old logo — a combination of “E” and “S”— emphasized the “Software” part of our name. These days, however, we also offer cloud transformation and data engineering services, including Azure cloud migrations, disaster recovery, SQL Server managed services, data warehousing, and more.

Our new logo focuses on the “E” for Emergent because we’re more than a software company.

Connection to our sister company

There’s a new business in the Emergent family. A key factor in Emergent Software’s success has always been our ability to recruit and hire top tech talent. We’ve decided to share this service with our customers by creating a spinoff company, Emergent Staffing.

Emergent Staffing may be a separate entity, but it was created by the same customer-focused company with whom many of you have built a long-term partnership. We wanted to make sure that our rebrand recognized the relationship between Emergent Software and Emergent Staffing.

 

Style update

Emergent is committed to innovation and continuous improvement across all of our services. To demonstrate that, we wanted to apply the same standard to our logo.

The previous Emergent Software logo was an older style. Plus, it had some issues, like a subpar vertical layout and a horizontal layout that was too wide relative to height. The new logo fixes those problems and aligns with modern market trends and industry preferences.

Bonus: New merch!

There’s new Emergent Software swag on the way, so it made sense to refresh our logo now rather than making new merch with an old logo.

Concerns about rebranding

Although we were excited about our brand refresh, we did have a few concerns.

First, we didn’t want to dilute our brand equity. In other words, we have a good reputation and a brand that our customers are familiar with, so we wanted to make sure that we were still recognizable. We also wanted to avoid a lengthy rebrand process, which might delay the time to market on new services and our new entity, Emergent Staffing.

 

With all these ideas and considerations in mind, we started work on our new design.

Steps in our rebrand process

We started the process by examining our existing branding to decide which core elements captured the essence of our brand and which aspects could be updated.

1. Design planning

We started the process by examining our existing branding to decide which core elements captured the essence of our brand and which aspects could be updated.

 

2. Creating the design

We approached this brand refresh with a goal of highlighting that Emergent Software is a “full stack technology partner.” This is represented by the three stacked lines inside our new logo

 

3. Extending the design to our new business

Since we're introducing a new member of the Emergent family, Emergent Staffing, it was important to create a cohesive brand experience between the two businesses. That meant creating consistent visual elements, messaging, and brand values in order to build a strong and recognizable identity. For example, both logos have the same stacked three lines.

This consistency also enables efficient asset generation, cross-promotion, and collaboration between Emergent Staffing and Emergent Software.

4. Exploring color palettes

Our previous site and assets employed a limited color palette. We decided to increase the colors we use to better accommodate the expanded services we offer as a “full stack tech partner.” Using color to differentiate our service categories makes things easy to understand at a glance.

We explored multiple palettes and narrowed the list down to a handful that we felt best conveyed the personality of our brand. We ran the color palettes through a series of accessibility tests and then we tested the color palettes in real world scenarios by using them in mockups of webpages, ads, and PowerPoint slides. We also found complementary yet unique colors to represent Emergent Staffing. While the matching logos make it obvious that Emergent Software and Emergent Staffing are related, the distinct color schemes help to differentiate them both internally and externally. Emergent Staffing’s colors are softer to emphasize the human-first nature of the business. The Staffing colors went through the same accessibility and real-world testing as the Emergent Software colors. Once we had a few vetted palettes, we held a meeting with leadership to review and select our final choices.

 

5. Developing a visual language

With our colors and our “full stack” design determined, it was time to figure out our brand’s style and how we express ourselves. We wanted our assets and web properties to recognizable as belonging to Emergent even without seeing the logo.

The visual language includes typography, iconography, photo treatments and design styles. We chose to keep the style clean and professional with some progressive embellishments that follow modern design trends to keep the brand fresh.

6. Refreshing our website

We have exciting plans for a completely new website in the near future. However, we wanted to get our new brand launched as soon as possible, so we started with the much smaller project of incorporating it into our existing website.

7. Updating existing assets

The next step was to embark on cataloging and refreshing our existing brand assets to ensure consistency.

8. Creating new assets

Finally, we were ready to start creating new assets for our new services and new sister company.

The bottom line is that — like our new logo — we’ve stayed the same in some ways and changed in others. We’re still committed to world-class service and delivering successful technology solutions, but we’ve evolved to offer more to our partners and the new look reflects that.