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Deep Dive: A look into our new Brand Visual Identity Mar 18, 2020

Rob M. , Mar 18, 2020 :

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Hey y'all,

As OnePlus grows, so does the number of people it reaches. This presents some challenges. On the one hand, we need to stay true to our brand color and to our loyal users. On the other, we need to better communicate who we are to newer, unfamiliar audiences. In addition, as we expand, we need to make sure that our brand’s image, and the message we’re delivering, is more consistent across all interactions. To cut through the noise of a growingly saturated market, we want everyone, everywhere to have a consistently positive and high-quality experience with OnePlus.

WHY CHANGE A GOOD THING?
Before delving into what has changed and what’s staying the same, we want to take some time to go through the why. Since we started OnePlus in December 2013, our logo and overall visual identity has remained largely untouched. We’ve made some minor adjustments here and there (which many of you may not have even noticed), but this is the most significant revamp of our brand image so far. And why? Well, in part because we felt like it was time to shake things up a bit.

When we first started this project, we wanted to unify our brand across our products, digital channels, offline sales channels, and other touchpoints. True to our Never Settle spirit, after a more thorough analysis, we noticed we needed to take a step further and more broadly revamp our visual identity.

WHAT CHANGES?
In general, people aren’t comfortable with change. So, to avoid a disruptive transition, we started integrating some of the new elements into our past launches. This let us test the waters with some design decisions and also gave us the opportunity to learn how you perceived these changes and iterate based on that feedback.

While the average consumer may not even notice it at first, we’re sure the biggest change for our core users will be the logo. A logo is very important element to a brand. Think of any brand you feel strongly about and its logo will likely be one of the first things that pops into your head. We know that our community loves our logo, so our objective was clear: retain the overall design while solving some of the issues we identified that would make our logo more accessible to more people.

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The changes you see here have two purposes – Create a clearer association between the logo and the brand while improving legibility and visibility. To achieve this, we increased the logo’s thickness, gave the number 1 some curve so it’s more immediately recognizable and slightly increased the plus sign to make it a more relevant part of the logo in homage to our community, which we view as an extension of the OnePlus family. We also removed the solid box behind the word “OnePlus” and made the weight of the entire logo consistent to improve the overall balance.

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The second change that you might notice is our updated Never Settle. Keeping our signature tagline, we changed its style by updating the font, spacing between the letters and swapped the upper case for mixed case.

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This leads us to our third change: a new typeface. Departing from OnePlus Slate, we wanted a highly functional, but versatile typeface – legible for long texts, but also perfect for our logo or headlines. We “test read” a wide range of different typefaces to make sure the letters formed words with the least effort for the user, to assure the best reading experience.

Combining all these elements, we also worked on achieving a more consistent, unique and recognizable brand image. We took our first steps with a bolder look and feel for the OnePlus 7T Series launch, collected invaluable feedback and iterated on what turned out to be a very well-received approach. The result is a better use of our brand colors that conveys a bold yet premium finish, while keeping things fresh and vibrant with new accent colors.

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WHAT STAYS THE SAME?
If what changes is important, keeping what makes us OnePlus is of the essence. Therefore, our creative process started with a careful study of who we are, getting to know our users, and what makes our brand unique.

As mentioned earlier, we’ve retained the classic elements of our refreshed logo: the 1, the + and the surrounding box, as well as the lockup with the icon and “OnePlus”.

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Our primary color palette still consists of black, red, and white. These colors have formed the foundation of the OnePlus brand. The OnePlus red you know and love is still a core part of what defines our visual image, while the new accent colors we’re introducing will give our designers more vibrant colors to play with.

The way we style our Never Settle tagline may have changed, but the attitude behind it remains unaltered. The same spirit that led us to iterate some of the visual elements down to single pixels is the same spirit that will keep bringing to every action we take.

So, in that spirit, we’re really happy to bring our community with us together through the transition to the new OnePlus visual identity. We wanted to update some of the aspects of our visual identity that needed a refresh, while making sure to maintain many of the key elements that you have come to associate with the OnePlus brand. We hope you’re as excited as we are.

❤️ ROB (aka 萝卜头)