Six years after launching in the midst of the pandemic, the London and LA studio is taking its own advice and turning up its truth.
Rebranding a company is a lot of pressure. Multiply that tenfold when you’re a design studio, and you’re rebranding yourself. Few things you design will ever come under such scrutiny from both your clients and your colleagues. Imagine the stress!
So it’s admirable that six years after launching in 2020, How&How has unveiled a new strategy, visual and verbal identity and website. Rather than “soft launch” it without anyone noticing, they’ve announced it with all guns blazing, loud and proud. Which makes total sense, because the rebrand is built around a single idea: “Turn up your truth.”
In turn, it makes sense that, as well as dropping their ampersand for a punchier + sign, the LA and London-based studio went from lowercase to all-caps. How&How is now HOW+HOW.
Why the logo matters
At the risk of putting a dampener on things, Creative Boom won’t actually use that capitalisation going forward: our style guide dictates writing company names with initial caps only (with a few exceptions, like initialisms such as the BBC). But that’s not really the point because the capitals are only the start.
Where the volume of ‘Turn up the truth’ really comes through is in the flexible design of the new logo, which apes an analogue volume dial. Rather than sitting in one fixed shape, the H+H mark flexes and amplifies to fit any layout.
In its stretched-out form, the letters run along one long crossbar, broken by a slim vertical stroke; a bit like a fader on a mixing desk.
The metaphor is clear: to be original, a brand needs to find the one thing only it can claim, then dial it up.
As founder Cat How puts it: “For six years we’ve told clients that turning up your truth is the only way to be original. This was our chance to take our own advice, and to build a brand as ambitious as the teams and clients we work with.”
Visual identity
Spinning off from the logo, a new 3D illustration style aims to leap off the page while staying, as How+How puts it, “rooted in rock-solid truth”. The brand’s green-yellow has been evolved into a shade the team calls “Gello”, which is designed to evoke energy without being overwhelming. Meanwhile, refined Wagram serif and subtle animation keep things clear and considered.
The verbal identity has been sharpened too, with shorter and more direct copy. As a writer who reads, it has to be said, a lot of waffle on agency sites, I have to applaud that.
Elsewhere, the website has been rebuilt, and notably, it’s been optimised for AI search as well as Google. It even includes pages written specifically for large language models to crawl, which is something I sense most agencies are looking to do right now, but few have actually implemented.
Overall, for a studio that tells clients to find their one true thing and crank it up, this is about as convincing a demo as you could ask for. Six years in, How+How has turned itself up to full volume, and it suits it.
Leave a Reply