We’re asked this a lot.
“Do we need a rebrand?”
The honest answer is: it depends on what’s actually changing in your business.
A rebrand is about transformation.
A refresh is about refinement.
Confuse the two, and you either overspend on change you don’t need or underinvest when the stakes are much higher.
A rebrand isn’t a new logo. It’s a strategic shift.
If your business is merging, entering new markets, repositioning, targeting a different audience, or significantly evolving its services, your brand needs to move with you.
That isn’t surface-level polish. That’s structural change.
A rebrand typically means revisiting:
If the business's foundation has shifted, the brand architecture must shift as well. Otherwise, you create misalignment between what you’ve become and how you show up.
And misalignment costs credibility.
A refresh is different.
If your strategy still feels right but your brand feels dated, inconsistent or indistinct, you probably don’t need to start from scratch.
You need to sharpen what’s already there.
That might mean:
The core stays intact. The expression improves.
A refresh protects brand equity while ensuring you don’t fall behind.
Most businesses jump straight to visuals. They ask for a new logo before asking whether their positioning is still relevant. They commission a new website before clarifying what they actually want to be known for.
Design is visible. Strategy is not.
But if you don’t diagnose the scale of change required first, you risk solving the wrong problem beautifully.
The first question is never “What should it look like?”
It’s “What has actually changed?”
If your brand was built on solid strategic thinking from the start, it should hold strong for years.
Consider FedEx. Their current logo has been in place since 1994. Or Coca-Cola, whose wordmark has remained remarkably consistent since the 19th century.
What’s important isn’t the longevity of the logo. It’s what happened around it.
Messaging evolved. Campaigns adapted. Market positioning matured. They didn’t discard recognition and trust. They built on it.
A full rebrand becomes necessary when the business itself changes significantly. But that doesn’t automatically mean erasing everything people already recognise.
Brand equity is an asset. It should be handled carefully.
Think of it like servicing a car. You don’t wait for it to break down.
We recommend stepping back every three years or so and asking some straight questions:
Markets shift. Customer expectations evolve. Design standards move on. If your brand doesn’t keep pace, it will slowly lag behind the business it represents.
A refresh keeps the engine tuned.
Branding isn’t mathematical. There’s no formula that says, “Change 30 percent and it becomes a rebrand.”
In reality, most projects sit somewhere in between.
Sometimes the visuals need refinement, but the messaging needs rethinking.
Sometimes the strategy is solid, but the identity needs modernising.
Sometimes what starts as a refresh uncovers a deeper structural issue.
Every business is different. Every context matters.
The right decision is the one that aligns your brand with who you are now and where you’re heading next.
If you’re unsure, that’s usually the signal. Not necessarily that you need a rebrand, but that you need a proper assessment.
At Studio Mint, that’s where we start. Not with a shiny new logo. With clarity.
