The world of branding is consistently growing, and no company is aware of that fairly like JKR. Based in 1990, Jones Knowles Ritchie has been on the epicentre of branding excellence for many years, shaping main design as we all know it, however as client tastes evolve and know-how quickly advances, at present”s artistic sphere is extra variable than ever.
Forward of this 12 months’s Model Affect Awards, I sat down with JKR’s government artistic administrators, Stuart Radford and Ricardo Bezerra, to discover the evolution of branding. Collectively, we mentioned how social media has influenced the business, how manufacturers have to embrace evolution, and what it takes to create iconic manufacturers in 2025.
(Picture credit score: JKR)
How has branding advanced because you began within the business?
Stuart: When Blur and Oasis have been battling for Britpop supremacy, branding was a really totally different beast. It was all about visible id: logos, straplines, and strict model pointers dominated. The objective? Recognition and recall. The very best manufacturers have been intelligent, enjoying with detrimental area and visible puns to ship that elusive “smile within the thoughts.” Good? Completely. Emotional? Probably not.
Quick ahead to at present, and branding is a wholly totally different sport. It’s now not nearly what you see – it’s about what you are feeling. The main target has shifted to emotional consistency throughout each touchpoint, each bodily and digital. We now stay in a world of expressive identities, emotive tone of voice, and immersive model experiences. Manufacturers aren’t static logos anymore; they’re dwelling, respiration tales. Our concepts should carry additional and meet extra advanced emotional wants fairly than simply elevating a one-off smile.”
The place manufacturers as soon as managed their narrative, now the viewers decides whether or not or to not consider it
Because of social media, branding has advanced from one-way broadcasts to two-way conversations in actual time. Gone are the times of sluggish, pre-planned campaigns. In the present day’s manufacturers take part in tradition because it occurs – responding, reacting, connecting. The place manufacturers as soon as managed their narrative, now the viewers decides whether or not or to not consider it. Affect has been democratised.
Maybe the largest shift? Branding isn’t nearly advertising or design anymore – it touches every part. From product expertise and promoting to inside tradition and customer support, model now lives in each a part of the enterprise. As its position has grown, the strains between model, design, and promoting have blurred.
That’s what makes at present’s branding so thrilling. It’s not nearly creating standout visuals. It’s about discovering what a model actually stands for, its emotional fact, and expressing that throughout each channel and expertise. The objective isn’t simply consistency; it’s emotional resonance.
How has advancing know-how influenced the design sphere?
Stuart: Let’s skip the continued AI debate for now. As a substitute, let’s give attention to how know-how is reshaping branding and design.
We’re in a brand new period. Know-how has turned the design world right into a playground of chance. Lots of the outdated constraints – format, consistency, and scale – have fallen away. Generative instruments now permit us to construct identities that aren’t mounted however adaptive, with a number of expressions. In-house groups aren’t simply implementing a model anymore, they’re actively creating and decoding it.
Variable fonts make typography extra expressive. Actual-time knowledge visualisation turns uncooked numbers into grounded, evocative tales. Algorithms allow tailor-made, responsive experiences. And AI? It opens up infinite prospects, a lot of which we’re solely starting to know.
What makes this second particularly thrilling is the timing. A lot of this know-how continues to be comparatively new, which suggests the chance to do one thing authentic and distinctive could be very actual. However there’s a catch: it solely works if the tech is used with objective.
The underside line? Know-how, when used with intent, can elevate a model from forgettable to unforgettable. However it should at all times serve the story – by no means distract from it.
What makes a standout model in 2025?
Riacardo: A standout model is one which has the flexibility to be itself, or as we are saying at JKR, to be distinctive, in all places and always.
We stay in a extremely aggressive market the place companies have to maneuver quick to maintain up with folks’s evolving wants. In that context, it’s simple for model managers to lose sight of what makes their model actually distinctive. A model shapes the best way a enterprise connects with folks – by way of its services or products, its relationships, its tradition, and its symbols.
So, what makes a model stand out at present is its means to be constant throughout every part you possibly can see and really feel. Each enterprise resolution, whether or not it’s tactical or strategic, serves as a possibility to maneuver the model ahead, at all times contemplating how folks work together with it over time and throughout touchpoints. To make this occur, branding and design should work hand in hand.
