The evolution of our logo.

Jules Prick
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Jules Prick
Partner
Aug 22, 2018 . 3 mins read
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‘Who is Koos?’ We hear a lot. ‘Is he the actual founder of Koos Service Design?’ No.

When we started nine years ago we wanted to create a brand that would stand out from all the other ‘boring’ innovation agencies. We decided on bringing to life a character ‘Koos’ and started communicating through him. Our logo became the representation of this character, inspired by Piet Parra. Koos was born, wearing our distinctive designer glasses. He quickly became part of our total brand and communication strategy. Koos talked with the visitor of our website, had his own Facebook page and personally answered our voicemail: “Hi, this is Koos, Jules is not available at the moment, but please leave a message after the beep, and he’ll get back to you asap.”

Our first logo sketches in 2009, the first logo of Koos, and how Koos became the embodiment of our ambitions.

Becoming the Playhouse of Service Design

We have been growing steadily and in 2015 – 2016 we started to become a serious player, developing our own methodologies and extending our Service Design towards UX Design. In this process many of our employees and customers lost touch with the original Koos, our funny character. Was he still the right representation of our company?

We saw the urge to reinvent ourselves and have a more solid and powerful logo to claim our new position; The Playhouse of Service Design. We want to be the place where the best designers gather to solve complex challenges while having fun together. At the same we did not want to lose the flair and recognisability of our original brand.

Evolution or revolution?

Cristina Zanon (mother of the first Koos) set out to develop the new concepts. We needed our logo to be solid, strategic, claiming expertise. At the same time however we did not want to lose our bold playfulness and adventurous attitude. A sweet paradox and a thin line at the same time.

Making it ‘mand’ (bold)

Trying to make the new concepts work we wrestled with the translation and implementation of our new identity; How much playfulness and seriousness do we want? To quote a good friend of mine:

“I am already so extraverted that I need to dress down to keep the balance. I wear black. To much colour is not good for me.”

And that’s how we nailed our new logo. Solid, bold and simple, yet with and with a little twist and hint to our heritage. Let us know what you think!

Our new logo, designed by Cristina Zanon

Want to talk about logos and designer glasses?

Jules Prick
Written by
Jules Prick
Partner
Aug 22, 2018 . 3 mins read
Share this article