Breaking all the brand design rules!

Breaking the rules with an ever-changing logo, Home Centre's brand refresh by Cato Brand Partners takes advantage of a broader visual language to convey the message to shoppers that it is changing with the times.

Home Centre is a leading home retailer with a wide network of more than 90 stores across the Gulf states, Egypt, Lebanon and the Indian subcontinent.

Recently celebrating its 25th anniversary, Home Centre has embraced a new buying philosophy of ever-changing designs and styles, to appeal to an evolving market. The challenge is conveying this change to shoppers, who perhaps feel they already understand the brand, says Cato Brand Partners UAE managing director Dadi Motiwalla.

Whereas some home retailers stick with a distinctive look, Home Centre sources a wide range of furniture from around the world. While constantly changing stock every season offers shoppers more choice, Motiwalla says it makes it more difficult to encapsulate what makes Home Centre distinct.

"Home Centre deliberately doesn't have a signature look, so if you walked into a home which was furnished with Home Centre, you wouldn't necessarily recognise it," he says.

Just a as trends change, the furniture and home furnishing ranges Home Centre offers to it's customers adapt encouraging customers to create their own personal style, enabling every home to tell its own unique story.

The new identity brandmark reflects design swatches, catering to the different tastes that make up Home Centre's customers' homes and has been purposely designed to appear to be continually changing and adaptable – never remaining static but always updateable.

It’s as creative and imaginative as the products and services Home Centre offers. "The retailer's only constant is change, which is a real strength and great for shoppers, but it's challenging for the brand when looking for a way to convey that differentiation and establish a recognised brand."

To convey the business strategy through the brand, Cato Brand Partners took Home Centre's house-shaped logo and applied the concept of a 'broader visual design'. Rather than simply a static logo, the result is a flexible yet instantly recognisable design language which can be continually modified across the business and across regions.

"To clearly convey Home Centre's business model, we created a flexible identity which constantly changes and adapts, just as they constantly change to meet the needs of their customers," Motiwalla says. "The three panels still create Home Centre's iconic house-shaped logo, but within this framework they have the flexibility to adapt to new trends and diversity while remaining instantly recognisable across countries and cultures as they expand into new markets."

Home Centre's rebranding is a great example of the fact that brands must "stand out, not just fit in" in order to find success and stand the test of time, says Cato Brand Partners founder and iconic Australian designer Ken Cato. "Businesses start out saying 'we want to stand out and be different' but, in reality, most are nervous about stepping outside the perceived parameters of their industry," Cato says. "The key to brand longevity is to be yourself and use your logo to tell your story, rather than pretend to be something that you're not."

"A broader visual language allows your brand to be recognised and felt, not just read, which helps convey your authenticity and forge a stronger connection."

Constantly changing the colours, patterns and styles of each panel in the logo "breaks the rules" when it comes to branding guidelines, yet still works for Home Centre, Motiwalla says. "In some ways it is a radical departure, but it still stays true to the broad visual design ethos of conveying to the customer who you are and what you stand for," he says. "We thought it might be a hard sell, but Home Centre was very open to it because it really captures what they're trying to achieve."

"Styles vary and tastes change, but Home Centre's new branding gives it the ability to confidently move with the times."