A New Pair
of Shoes
Dotted Line Agency
How does a rebrand set the stage for where DLA is headed?
It’s often easy and even expected to dread a rebrand. There’s signage to change, swag becomes outdated, and even for those of us in the vocation of branding and design the process can be intimidating and daunting.
Our latest rebrand for Dotted Line was an exception to this rule, and was welcomed and encouraged throughout the creative and launch process.
We were ready.
Ready for a new outfit – a change of clothes that better reflects who we are and how we see ourselves. Brands are often built under the duress of time constraints, perception second-guessing, and to be honest, a dash of overthinking it that can lead to a brand that doesn’t live up to our own standards. This rebrand was our chance to right the ship.
The brief was an exciting challenge: a sophisticated, elegant, mysterious, confident brand that was also slightly feminine and able to be fun if not happy. Got it. Happy sophisticated. Easy.
We also needed the new brand to be capable of speaking to our unique values, differentiators, and philosophies – that we are an agency of pathfinders and connection-makers; that we value people more than process. Got it. People pathfinders.
The design began to coalesce with the juxtaposition of large, strong, traditional typefaces placed over a color palette that is fresh, primary, and softens the overall vibe into being one of confident positivity.
We landed on a three-color DLA acronym mark in all-caps supplemented by a representative graphic symbol we call the constellation, comprised of braille-like dots that form the shapes of our initials.
Our rebrand was also a chance to rethink our use of photography and social media. We landed on an expressive, candid, outdoors portrait style in beautiful Kodachrome colors that celebrates our incredible team and puts distance between us and the industry-standard posed headshots. For social media, expect to see a free-form celebration of creativity and imagination on our Instagram, and more industry thought-leadership on our LinkedIn.
We not only love our new mark, but feel we are finally expressing our true brand selves and the potential of where we are going. We have triumphantly cast off our cobbler’s shoes and are running full speed ahead in our new brand jawnz.
